Week 8 - Monday, October 9, 2006 to Friday, October 13, 2006

Inheritance and Polymorphism

Comments

     This week's content is preparation for Project 3, which will use both Inheritance and Polymorphism.  These two concepts are at the heart of Object Oriented Programming.  They allow a programmer to take an already existing class, and extend it to add functionality.  The most amazing feature of Inheritance and Polymorphism is that the programmer adding the functionality does not even need to see the original code.  As long as the .h file is available, the programmer can add functionality with only the compiled code of the original class, called the base class..  The functionality is added by creating a new class, called the derived class, that contains all the code from the base class plus all the new code created for the derived class.  An object of the derived class is also an object of the base class, and can be used anywhere an object of the base class can be used, plus in any code created for the new derived class.  All of this is implemented by the linker, not the compiler.  The original creators can even update and improve the base class, and as long as they don't change the .h file, the linker can re-link with the new object file and the updates will be included in the newly created code.  Only new code needs to be re-compiled.  The linker will re-connect all the other old object code with the new code.  

Course Content

    Week 8
    Inheritance
    Polymorphism

Readings

Deitel and Deitel Fifth Edition, ??.

Deitel and Deitel Fourth Edition, ??

Lab Assignment

    There will be no Lab 8 this week, since Project 3 will cover these concepts completely.
 

Week 8 Test  (note that this test will be given 1 week later because of the mid-term this Friday).

    12 Questions for 4 points, with fractions rounded up.

    Only available Friday, October 20th (one week later than normal), from 6:00 am to 3:00 am Saturday morning on Angel.  It will cover the following material:   

• Conceptual questions or questions about code, all based on material covered in the Week 8 Course Content,   Inheritance and Polymorphism.