Overview

Sometimes, you want to have two (or more) classes that share a lot of similar attributes but differ in key ways. There are multiple programming solutions to this situation (other than copy and paste!), but one that we’ll focus on today is inheritance. You may or may not have seen this previously, so I’m assuming you haven’t.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

  • Explain the idea of inheritance in programming
  • Identify the C++ syntax for creating a derived class
  • Identify the C++ syntax for calling the methods of a derived class

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

  • Create your own base and derived classes

Resources

You can use the following resources (there are lots of other good ones out there):

Checks

Submit answers to the following on Moodle:

  • If I have a base class Organism, what is the syntax for creating a derived class Predator?
  • If my base class Organism has a public method move, what is the syntax for creating a Predator object and calling the move method?