Inheritance is a significant concept in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and is fundamental to creating efficient, scalable, and modular code within the C++ programming language.

In real-world terms, we can liken the concept of inheritance in programming to the inheritance of characteristics in the biological realm. For example, in finance—as a senior engineer, you might be familiar with the concept of inheriting properties and behaviors in a financial system or dynamic. It is somewhat similar in programming. Inheritance in OOP allows classes to inherit common state and behaviors from another class.

In the context of C++, inheritance allows us to define a class in terms of another class, which makes it easier to create and maintain an application. This not only provides an opportunity to reuse the code functionality but also allows us to add more features to a class without modifying it. The class which is inherited is called the base or parent class, and the class that does so is known as the derived or child class.

Consider the following code snippet:

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#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

​

class Parent { // base class

public:

    int id;

    string name;

};

​

class Child : public Parent { // derived class inheriting from base class

public:

    int age;

};

​

int main() {

    Child child;

    child.id = 1;

    child.name = "John";

    child.age = 30;

    cout << "ID: " << child.id << "\n";

    cout << "Name: " << child.name << "\n";

    cout << "Age: " << child.age << "\n";

    return 0;

}