- 10.1 Introduction
- 10.2 Polymorphism Examples
- 10.3 Demonstrating Polymorphic Behavior
- 10.4 Abstract Classes and Methods
- 10.5 Case Study: Payroll System Using Polymorphism
- 10.6 final Methods and Classes
- 10.7 Case Study: Creating and Using Interfaces
- 10.8 (Optional) Software Engineering Case Study: Incorporating Inheritance into the ATM System
- 10.9 Wrap-Up
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
10.9 Wrap-Up
This chapter introduced polymorphism—the ability to process objects that share the same superclass in a class hierarchy as if they are all objects of the superclass. The chapter discussed how polymorphism makes systems extensible and maintainable, then demonstrated how to use overridden methods to effect polymorphic behavior. We introduced abstract classes, which allow programmers to provide an appropriate superclass from which other classes can inherit. You learned that an abstract class can declare abstract methods that each subclass must implement to become a concrete class and that a program can use variables of an abstract class to invoke the subclasses’ implementations of abstract methods polymorphically. You also learned how to determine an object’s type at execution time. Finally, the chapter discussed declaring and implementing an interface as another way to achieve polymorphic behavior.
You should now be familiar with classes, objects, encapsulation, inheritance, interfaces and polymorphism—the most essential aspects of object-oriented programming. In the next chapter, we take a deeper look at graphical user interfaces (GUIs).