What Is Inheritance?

A class inherits state and behavior from its superclass. Inheritance provides a powerful and natural mechanism for organizing and structuring software programs.

For example, mountain bikes, racing bikes, and tandems are all kinds of bicycles. In object-oriented terminology, mountain bikes, racing bikes, and tandems are all subclasses of the bicycle class. Similarly, the bicycle class is the superclass of mountain bikes, racing bikes, and tandems. This relationship is shown in the following figure.