Summary
In this chapter, we introduced the major object-oriented concepts that you will need to understand to get the most out of programming against the Framework Class Library.
We have seen how:
Classes are used as templates for objects, defining how they behave and the types of information they need to store.
Inheritance is used to implement class hierarchies and reuse code from a parent class in its children classes.
Polymorphism allows classes to take on many different forms of behaviors, depending on the particular circumstances.
As we explore the class library in Part II of this book, you will see ample evidence of these concepts in action. In the next chapter, we will show how many of these OO concepts physically manifest themselves in the .NET Class Library.