In the realms of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and finance, the concepts of Inheritance and Polymorphism play crucial roles in making the code reusable, efficient, and intuitive.
Let's revisit our finance-themed example. In a financial simulation, we might have a collection of FinancialDerivative
objects - which could be Stocks
, Bonds
, or even more types of derivatives in a more complex system.
Imagine you wanted to calculate the value of the entire portfolio. Without Polymorphism, you'd have to check the type of each derivative object, cast it to the right type, and then call the right CalculateValue
function. However, with Polymorphism, each object knows how to calculate its own value. So you can write a simple loop that calls CalculateValue()
on each object, irrespective of its type.
This is a real-world scenario where Inheritance and Polymorphism work together to create scalable, reusable, and efficient code. Another common use-case could be an online shopping system where different types of products (clothes, electronics, books, etc.) inherit from a base Product
class and implement their CalculateShipping()
method.
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using namespace std;
class FinancialDerivative {
public:
virtual double CalculateValue() = 0;
};
class Stock : public FinancialDerivative {
public:
double CalculateValue() override {
// calculate value for Stock
}
};
class Bond : public FinancialDerivative {
public:
double CalculateValue() override {
// calculate value for Bond
}
};
int main() {
vector<FinancialDerivative*> portfolio;
portfolio.push_back(new Stock);
portfolio.push_back(new Bond);
double totalValue = 0;
for(auto& derivative : portfolio) {
totalValue += derivative->CalculateValue();
}
cout << "Total portfolio value: " << totalValue << endl;
}