Multiple inheritance in OOP languages refers to a class inheriting functionality from more than one parent class. It allows for unique entities to inherit properties from different classes, avoiding the need to copy code. Not all languages support it, and it’s important to understand class basics before using it.
Multiple inheritance, when referring to object-oriented programming (OOP) languages, is a term that refers to a class that inherits functionality from more than one parent class. The term cannot be fully understood without understanding what a class is. A very short definition of a class is a set of programming instructions or code in an OOP language that describes and is the essence of an entity. Classes define all the properties of an entity and contain all the methods needed to manipulate those properties.
Depending on the program being coded, it may be necessary to write many classes that have things in common but must remain distinct entities. This is where multiple inheritance comes into play. For example, technological advances that would allow construction of a submarine that could fly like an aircraft or an aircraft that could dive like a submarine would produce a hybrid product. That hybrid would have some of the same properties as an airplane and some of the properties of a submarine, but it would be a unique product or entity. Multiple inheritance would easily allow the hybrid to inherit functionality from an airplane class and functionality from a submarine class at the same time without copying the code.
Another way to explain multiple inheritance is to say that it allows more than one class to serve as the basis for other classes. There are advantages to using multiple inheritance instead of just copying code from one or more classes to another. Bugs in programs often take time to discover, but when they are discovered, they need to be fixed as soon as possible. If buggy code is copied into multiple classes, programmers must apply the same fix to each copy of the code. When multiple inheritance is employed, however, it should only work with the original class code from which all subclasses inherit functionality.
Not all programming languages support multiple inheritance, even if they do support object orientation. It could be argued that some versions of some languages support this when in fact they support inheritance from just two classes. Classes from which other classes inherit functionality are often called “parent” or “superclass” classes, and classes that inherit are called “child” or “subclass” classes. Programmers interested in working with classes in this way are strongly advised to first gain a solid understanding of the basics of classes before attempting to harness the power of multiple inheritance, as errors or poor coding practices in the parent class are passed on to the class child.
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