Best usage and examples of inheritance

[NutterzUK]

Hi,

I'm doing a little bit of lab work and have to set a coursework. I've been thinking of ideas for a programming task regarding inheritance. I was considering chess pieces but don't really want to do a game since some people will have the disadvantage of not knowing the rules. There is also shapes inheriting from a shape class but it's a bit too simple. I'm looking for something fun, with multiple sub classes and which isn't too easy (it's a final piece).

Any ideas? I'm just looking for good real world ideas, a little inspiration.

 

[fez]

The classic one is some sort of motor vehicle I thought.

 

[NutterzUK]

The classic one is some sort of motor vehicle I thought.

Yep, I read that in a few books too and was thinking about that one.
It needs to be a bit difficult though, perhaps:

Vehicle class extended by car, truck, motorbike, sportscar, pushbike

A race object which can take a list of vehicles and a track in the constructor and has a start() method perhaps.

A track object which is probably read from a file. Different vehicles can be better or worse at certain parts of the track, ie motorbike is better at turning, a sportscar is faster on straights.

hmmm. Still thinking.

 

[AJK]

Can you define "a bit difficult"? What level of student are you teaching - night class, A-Level, final year University Comp Science? (I hope not the last!)

If all you're trying to teach is the concept of inheritance, this isn't particularly difficult and a simple task or two would be best. If you're setting some kind of final test for a whole programming course, then your race/track modelling idea starts to make sense.

 

[fez]

The difficulty could come from anything really. As you say, you could simulate a race, you could simulate wear to the vehicles based on distance travelled. Sometimes its good to use a vague specification to see what creativity the students possess and how keen they are to take it beyond the basics.

 

[davetherave2]

The other classic inheritance examples are airplanes and banks/bank accounts.

Other examples could be:

People/families/groups of people
Planets, moons, stars (all things space related)
Chemistry (atoms, molecules, sub atomic particles)
Music (different genres)
cities/towns/road networks
Animal species


Just a few that came to mind.

 

[NutterzUK]

Can you define "a bit difficult"? What level of student are you teaching - night class, A-Level, final year University Comp Science? (I hope not the last!)

If all you're trying to teach is the concept of inheritance, this isn't particularly difficult and a simple task or two would be best. If you're setting some kind of final test for a whole programming course, then your race/track modelling idea starts to make sense.

Final as in University last coursework 1st year, not final as in final year. Some interesting ideas here.

 

[cheechm]

Take for example:

Citizen
|_ Baby
|_ Child
|_ Adult

 

[AJK]

Final as in University last coursework 1st year, not final as in final year. Some interesting ideas here.

Is the test specifically about inheritance, or all aspects of object-oriented programming? I don't remember ever having any coursework which tested only inheritance, because it's a simple concept and an example of it can be drawn out in a minute or so.

The race model you suggested earlier sounds good as a broader object-oriented programming task, but beware of making it too complicated (for example, modelling acceleration, handling, overtaking, etc.)

davetherave2 suggested bank accounts - good example with several layers, could create a basic account management page showing a few current & savings accounts with methods to display balances, perform transfers, etc?

 

[topbanana]

Take for example:

Citizen
|_ Baby
|_ Child
|_ Adult

Surely that should start with Person

Citizen implies they belong to a country. It doesn't allow for future space colonies. Fail.

 

[SkyTerran]

A bit of a practical advice - always prefer composition over inheritance