Master the art of Object-Oriented Programming with Python

Dive into classes, inheritance, and polymorphism

Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

Python is an object-oriented programming language, which means it allows the creation and manipulation of objects that have certain properties and methods. In this article, we will take an in-depth look at Python’s object-oriented programming features, including classes, inheritance, and polymorphism.

Let us begin

Classes

In Python, a class is a blueprint for creating objects. Classes define the properties and methods that objects created from the class will have. Here is an example of a simple class called “Person”:

class Person:
    def __init__(self, name, age):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
    
    def say_hello(self):
        print("Hello, my name is " + self.name)

p = Person("John", 30)
p.say_hello() # Output: Hello, my name is John

In this example, the Person class has two properties, name and age, and one method, say_hello(). The __init__ method is a special method called a constructor, which is called when a new object is created from the class. The properties and methods of a class are defined within the class definition, but are only accessible from the objects created from that class.

Inheritance

Inheritance is a mechanism that allows a class to inherit properties and methods from another class. In Python, a class can inherit from one or more parent classes, using the class ChildClass(ParentClass1, ParentClass2, ...) syntax. Here is an example of inheritance:

class Animal:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
    
    def speak(self):
        pass

class Dog(Animal):
    def speak(self):
        return "Woof!"

dog = Dog("Fido")
print(dog.speak()) # Output: Woof!

In this example, the Dog class inherits from the Animal class, which means it has access to all the properties and methods of the Animal class. The Dog class also has its own speak() method, which overrides the inherited method from the parent class.

Polymorphism

Polymorphism is a mechanism that allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of…