This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
10.8 Wrap-Up
This chapter introduced polymorphism—the ability to process objects that share the same superclass in a class hierarchy as if they're 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 you 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. We discussed the concepts of final methods and classes. 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, you'll learn about exceptions, useful for handling errors during a program's execution. Exception handling provides for more robust programs.