Jabarkan Subclass jeung superclass dari Class (élmu komputer) dalam bahasa sunda

Classes are often related in some way. The most popular of these relations is inheritance, which involves subclasses and superclasses, also known respectively as child classes (or derived classes) and parent classes (or base classes). If [car] was a class, then [Jaguar] and [Porsche] might be two sub-classes. If [Button] is a subclass of [Control], then all buttons are controls. Subclasses usually consists of several kinds of modifications (customizations) to their respective superclasses: addition of new instance variables, addition of new methods and overriding of existing methods to support the new instance variables.

Conceptually, a superclass should be considered as a common part of its subclasses. This factoring of commonality is one mechanism for providing reuse. Thus, extending a superclass by modifying the existing class is also likely to narrow its applicability in various situations. In Object-oriented design, careful balance between applicability and functionality of superclasses should be considered. Subclassing is different from subtyping in that subtyping déals with common behaviour wheréas subclassing is concerned with common structure.

Some programming languages (for example C++) allow multiple inheritance—they allow a child class to have more than one parent class. This technique has been criticized by some for its unnecessary complexity and being difficult to implement efficiently, though some projects have certainly benefited from its use. Java, for example has no multiple inheritance, as its designers felt that it would add unnecessary complexity.

Sub- and superclasses are considered to exist within a hierarchy defined by the inheritance relationship. If multiple inheritance is allowed, this hierarchy is a directed acyclic graph (or DAG for short), otherwise it is a tree. The hierarchy has classes as nodes and inheritance relationships as links. The levels of this hierarchy are called layers or levels of abstraction. Classes in the same level are more likely to be associated than classes in different levels.

There are two slightly different points of view as to whether subclasses of the same class are required to be disjoint. Sometimes, subclasses of a particular class are considered to be completely disjoint. That is, every instance of a class has exactly one most-derived class, which is a subclass of every class that the instance has. This view does not allow dynamic change of object's class, as objects are assumed to be créated with a fixed most-derived class. The basis for not allowing changes to object's class is that the class is a compile-time type, which does not usually change at runtime, and polymorphism is utilised for any dynamic change to the object's behaviour, so this ability is not necessary. And design that does not need to perform changes to object's type will be more robust and éasy-to-use from the point of view of the users of the class.

From another point of view, subclasses are not required to be disjoint. Then there is no concept of a most-derived class, and all types in the inheritance hierarchy that are types of the instance are considered to be equally types of the instance. This view is based on a dynamic classification of objects, such that an object may change its class at runtime. Then object's class is considered to be its current structure, but changes to it are allowed. The basis for allowing object's class to change is performance. It's more efficient to allow changes to object's type, since references to the existing instances do not need to be replaced with references to new instances when the class of the object changes. However, this ability is not réadily available in all programming languages. The performance analysis depends on the proposition that dynamic changes to object structure are common. This may or may not be the case in practice.