Updated March 13, 2023
What is Inheritance in VB.Net?
Inheritance can be defined as the feature of the programming language that offers an opportunity to make the use of functions that are already defined in a base class. In Inheritance, the base class is the class which passes its functionality to other class. It is also called the parent class sometimes. The class that inherits the base class is called derived class and sometimes called child class as well. As the word inheritance itself demonstrates, it facilitates the passing of values or functions to some other classes. In VB.Net we can inherit more than one class to the derived class simultaneously. The purpose of inheritance is to make reduce the size of code and avoid defining the same function multiple times. Inheritance may be defined as the property of programming language that implements the mechanism of reusing the already defined functionality. It is very useful when it comes to developing an application with efficient code. There is no need to write the same function over and over. It could be used several times based on the requirement.
Understanding Inheritance in VB.Net
As far as we understood what is inheritance and what it does. Now we will try to understand it by using the syntax. The syntax will make you aware of how actually you can implement inheritance in VB.Net.
[access specifier] Class [Base class name]
Statement 1
Statement 2
..
Statement n
End Class
Class [Derived class name] Inherits [Base class name]
Statement 1
Statement 2
..
Statement n
End ClassHere, the based classed has to be defined first. Then by making the use of the “Inherits” keyword, we can implement inheritance in the program. So basically we need at least two classes to take leverage of inheritance. Once the class has to be the base class while others will be the derived class.
How does Inheritance in VB.Net make working so easy?
Inheritance is one of the very important features of any programming language. It makes the coding very easy and precise. The code once is written could be used several times. We do not need to define the same functionality again if it’s already existing or already defined. It actually makes the work easy by making programming less lengthy and helping the developer to the same lot of time.
Working with Inheritance in VB.Net
Now we will see how we can actually work with Inheritance with the help of an example. In the above section, we learned the syntax for implementing Inheritance. We will be following the same syntax to write our first basic program.
Base class
Class Hello
Public Sub sayHelloWorld()
Console.WriteLine("Hello World”)
End Sub
End Class
Derived class
Class Welcome: Inherits Hello
Public Sub sayWelcome()
Console.WriteLine("Welcome”)
End Sub
End Class
Class CallAllFunctions
Shared Sub Main()
Dim a As Welcome = new Welcome()
a.sayHelloWorld()
a.sayWelcome()
End Sub
End ClassIn the above program, we have written a code to display some string. Here the base class is name Hello while the derived class is named Welcome. The Welcome class inherits the Hello class and hence the function in Hello class could be called by the object of Welcome class and please make a note the vice versa is not possible.
The output of this program will be below.
Output :
Hello World
Welcome
Advantages of Inheritance in VB.Net
The feature of inheritance is very beneficial in programming. It actually helps a lot while writing complex programs as the feature of passing the functionality mitigates the complex looks of the code. Below are some of its common Advantages
- Reduces ambiguity – The code once is written could be used several times. Hence it eliminates the duplicates and makes the code unambiguous.
- Reusability – It follows the rule of creating once and use multiple times. Once any function is defined, we can use that function n number of times based on our requirement.
- Eliminate Coding Complexity – The code has to be written precisely in order to follow proper documentation and make it easy for other developers to understand the code. It could be done with the help of Inheritance.
- Enhances program efficiency – The program that makes the use of inheritance are very efficient as there are a few numbers of lines as compared to the same program which was developed without inheritance.
Required Skills
In order to work with inheritance, it is very important to understand what kind of skill set you need. Well, to implement it all you need is an understanding of programming fundamentals. As it is the common feature among all the programming languages, you will be able to work with it if you have an idea about the basics of any of the programming language.
Right audience for learning Inheritance in VB.Net technologies and career growth
All of the computer science students are supposed to submit a project before the completion of their degree. They are the perfect audience for learning .net as it’s a bit easy to make projects using this framework. If we talk about professionals, VB.Net is currently in huge demand and the requirement of this technology will grow exponentially due to the advancement of applications that are being used these days.
Conclusion
VB.Net is one among the best programming languages that provide an abundant number of features to make application development very easy and Inheritance is one of those features. Anyone with proficiency in .net framework could achieve a lot and grow their career in the booming world of information technology. It is very interesting to know that a huge number of web applications developed these days are the product of VB.Net and the numbers are increasing day by day.
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