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In the vast landscape of Python, there’s a powerful concept that can take your code to the next level — Inheritance. It’s like having a superpower that lets you build on existing code without reinventing the wheel.
If you’re ready to dive into the world of code evolution, this guide will break down Inheritance in Python with practical examples, making it accessible for beginners and beneficial for seasoned developers.
The Basics: What is Inheritance?
At its core, Inheritance is a mechanism that allows a new class to inherit attributes and methods from an existing class. It’s like passing on traits from a parent to its child, creating a hierarchy in your code structure. The parent class is often referred to as the base or superclass, and the class inheriting from it is the derived or subclass.
Let’s illustrate this with a simple example:
class Animal:
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
def speak(self):
raise NotImplementedError("Subclasses must implement this method.")
# Inheriting from the Animal class
class Dog(Animal)…