Reinforcing Inheritance Concepts in C#

Welcome back! Now that you have a solid understanding of classes and objects in C#, it's time to build on that knowledge by exploring inheritance. Consider it a natural progression in our journey into object-oriented programming (OOP).

Inheritance allows you to create a new class based on an existing class. By using inheritance, you can reuse code, add new features, and make your programs easier to manage and understand. Let's dive in and see what it's all about.

Let's start by defining a simple base class:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }

    public Person(string name, int age)
    {
        this.Name = name;
        this.Age = age;
    }

    public void Display()
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Name: {Name}, Age: {Age}");
    }
}

In this C# example, the Person class includes:

• Name and Age properties.
• A constructor to initialize these properties.
• A Display method to print out the name and age.

This class serves as the base class from which other classes can inherit.

Now, we define a derived class that inherits from the base class:

// Defines the Student class that inherits from the Person class
public class Student : Person
{
    // New property specific to Student
    public string Major { get; set; }

    // Constructor to initialize properties, including those from the base class
    public Student(string name, int age, string major) : base(name, age)
    {
        this.Major = major;
    }

    // Method to display student's information
    public void DisplayStudent()
    {
        // Call the Display method from the Person class to show name and age
        base.Display();
        // Display the student's major
        Console.WriteLine($"Major: {Major}");
    }
}

In this example, the Student class inherits from the Person class:

• Reuses the Name and Age properties and the Display method from the Person class.
• Adds a new property, Major.
• Provides a new method, DisplayStudent, that calls the base class Display method and prints the student's major.
• Uses the base keyword to call the constructor and methods of the Person class.