Learning Python : 🧬 Inheritance in Python

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

🧬 Inheritance in Python – Coding Like a Family!

Have you ever looked at your family and thought — “I have my mom’s smile” or “my dad’s sense of humor”? That’s inheritance in real life!

Guess what? In Python programming, classes can inherit features from other classes — just like kids inherit features from parents.

Let’s explore this magical concept called Inheritance in a super simple way! 🪄

👪 What is Inheritance?

In Python, Inheritance means that one class (child) can use the properties and methods of another class (parent).

📦 Why is this useful?

Reuse code without writing everything again
Keep your programs clean and organized
Add extra features only where needed

🧒 Real-Life Example: Parent and Child

Let’s say we have a parent class called Person, and a child class called Student.

# Parent Class
class Person:
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name

    def say_hello(self):
        print(f"Hello, I’m {self.name}!")

# Child Class
class Student(Person):
    def study(self):
        print(f"{self.name} is studying 📚.")

👶 Let's create a student!

s1 = Student("Anjali")
s1.say_hello()   # Inherited from Person
s1.study()       # From Student class

💬 Output:

Hello, I’m Anjali!
Anjali is studying 📚.

🧠 How It Works

Student inherits from Person
Student gets access to say_hello() without writing it again
We can add new features to Student like study()

🚗 Another Example: Vehicle → Car

class Vehicle:
    def __init__(self, brand):
        self.brand = brand

    def move(self):
        print(f"{self.brand} is moving!")

class Car(Vehicle):
    def honk(self):
        print(f"{self.brand} says beep beep! 🚗")

my_car = Car("Tata")
my_car.move()
my_car.honk()

💬 Output:

Tata is moving!
Tata says beep beep! 🚗

🔁 What if We Want to Change Inherited Behavior?

We can override the parent’s method in the child class:

class Dog:
    def speak(self):
        print("Woof! 🐶")

class Puppy(Dog):
    def speak(self):
        print("Yip yip! 🐕‍🦺")  # Overriding the method

🎮 Quick Coding Challenge:

Can you create these classes?

Animal → has method breathe()
Fish (inherits from Animal) → has method swim()

Try writing the code and show it to your teacher or friends!

✨ Summary

Term	Meaning
Class	A blueprint for objects
Inheritance	One class gets features from another
Parent	The base class
Child	The class that inherits

🔮 Coming Up Next

🧬 Multiple Inheritance (inheriting from more than one class)
🔒 Encapsulation (protecting your data)
🧠 Polymorphism (same name, different actions)

Learning Python