Your First Programming Language Greatly Influences How You Think About Code

Object-oriented programming, inheritance, and subtyping may have specific meanings that don't translate into other languages, depending on the first language you learn.

Java is the first language I learned in my career. Its structure is foundational in my early years of understanding programming concepts. After going through several other languages with very different approaches, I've widened my point of view. Today, I want to reflect on the idea of inheritance.

Inheritance in Java

In Java, the idea of inheritance is tightly coupled with the concept of subtyping. Subtyping is the implementation of a IS A relationship. For example, the Rabbit class is a subtype of the Mammal class. Henceforth, a Rabbit instance has all the behaviour of a Mammal: it inherits the behaviour.

Because of this, you can pass a Rabbit instance when a method ...