How to Use Inheritance to Create more Complex and Powerful Classes in C#

Inheritance is a feature of object-oriented programming languages that allows you to create a new class that is a modified version of an existing class. The new class is called the derived class, and the existing class is the base class. The derived class inherits members from the base class, meaning it can use the members of the base class as if they were its own. This allows you to reuse code and create a more organized and efficient program.

Inheritance is useful because it allows you to reuse code and create a more organized and efficient program. For example, suppose you have a base class called Animal that includes a Name property and a MakeNoise method. You can create a derived class called Dog that inherits from the Animal class, and then add additional members to the Dog class to give it more functionality. This allows you to reuse the code in the Animal class, and also add new functionality specific to the Dog class.

Read More: How to Overload Methods in C#

Inheritance is often used to create a hierarchy of classes, where a derived class is more specialized than its base class. For example, you could create a base class called Vehicle that includes a Drive method, and then create derived classes called Car, Truck, and Bicycle that inherits from the Vehicle class and adds additional functionality specific to each type of vehicle.

To use inheritance in C#, you must first create a base class. This can be done by using the class keyword followed by the name of the class. For example:

public class Animal
{
    // Members of the base class go here
}

public class Dog : Animal
{
    // Members of the derived class go here
}

public class Animal
{
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public void MakeNoise()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Some generic animal noise");
    }
}

public class Dog : Animal
{
    public void Bark()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Woof!");
    }
}

Dog myDog = new Dog();
myDog.Name = "Fido";
myDog.MakeNoise();  // Outputs "Some generic animal noise"
myDog.Bark();       // Outputs "Woof!"