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Programmers strive to develop reliable, maintainable, and extensible software systems. Fortunately, Python provides numerous constructs encouraging good engineering habits, including inheritance and abstract classes. Coupled together, these techniques facilitate stronger code reusability, minimize redundancies, and enforce uniformity across modules.
This article introduces inheritance and abstract classes in Python, accompanied by practical examples and recommendations.
What is Inheritance?
Inheritance describes a mechanism whereby a developer creates a subclass that inherits attributes and methods from a parent class. By establishing such connections, derived classes benefit from pre-existing definitions while adding novel capabilities, streamlining development efforts, and reducing inconsistencies.
Nevertheless, careless utilization of inheritance risks bloated class hierarchies, tight couplings, and rigid structures susceptible to breakage during evolution.
