ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Inheritance semantics

Hey buddy, do you know what inheritance is? Imagine you have a toy car and your best friend wants to borrow it. But your car is special, it has four wheels, a steering wheel, and can go forward and backward. Your friend likes your car so much that he asks his dad to give him a car just like yours. His dad goes to the toy store and buys a car that looks like yours but has only two wheels and can't go backward. Your friend is sad because he can't do everything your car can do.

Now, let's talk about inheritance in computer programming. A program is like a set of instructions telling the computer what to do. Sometimes, we need a new program that is similar to an existing one, but we don't want to start from scratch. That's where inheritance comes in.

Inheritance allows us to create a new program that "inherits" some of the features of the existing program. Just like your friend's toy car, the new program will look and work very similar to the original program but can have some additional features or be modified in different ways.

In programming, we have something called a "class," which is like a blueprint for creating objects. An object is an instance of a class. Let's say we have a class for creating cars. This class has instructions for creating a car with four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel. Now, let's say we want to create a new class for creating a sports car. We can "inherit" the features from the existing car class and add some new features specific to the sports car, such as a turbocharger, a spoiler, and better brakes.

So, in short, inheritance in programming means creating a new class that "inherits" some of the features of an existing class and can have additional features or be modified in different ways. It's like borrowing your friend's toy car and making a new one that looks and works like it but with some extra cool features.