Children inheriting traits from parents
Day 59 of 149
👉 Full deep-dive with code examples
The Family Traits Analogy
Children inherit traits from parents:
- Eye color from mom
- Height from dad
- Plus their own unique traits!
They get the parents' characteristics automatically.
How Inheritance Works
# Parent class
class Animal:
def breathe(self):
return "Breathing..."
def eat(self):
return "Eating..."
# Child class inherits from Animal
class Dog(Animal):
def bark(self):
return "Woof!"
# Dog gets EVERYTHING from Animal
fido = Dog()
fido.breathe() # "Breathing..." (inherited!)
fido.eat() # "Eating..." (inherited!)
fido.bark() # "Woof!" (its own)
Dog didn't need to define breathe() - it got it for free!
Why Use Inheritance?
Without:
class Dog:
def breathe(self): ...
def eat(self): ...
def bark(self): ...
class Cat:
def breathe(self): ... # Copy-paste! 😫
def eat(self): ... # Copy-paste!
def meow(self): ...
With:
class Animal:
def breathe(self): ...
def eat(self): ...
class Dog(Animal):
def bark(self): ...
class Cat(Animal):
def meow(self): ...
No duplication!
The Hierarchy
Animal
/ \
Dog Cat
/ \
Poodle Labrador
Each level inherits from above!
In One Sentence
Inheritance lets child classes automatically receive properties and methods from parent classes.
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