What can polymorphism do that inheritance can't?

Question

Imagine that we have a class Animal that extends to three other classes: Dog, Cat, Bird.

This animal class has a talk() and move() function. The talk function outputs "Animal talking" and the move function outputs "Animal moving".

For a dog, this is "Dog moving" and "Dog eating". For the Cat and Bird class, this difference is paralleled "Cat moving" etc.

Now, because of polymorphism, if I do

Animal charlietheBird = new Bird()

and then call in

charlietheBird.talk()

it will output

Bird talking

because the output is determined at runtime since the compiler knows that charlie is a type of Animal of the class Bird.

HOWEVER!!

I can simply do

Bird charlietheBird = new Bird();

and then calling charlietheBird.poop(); will give the same output, because the method would have been overridden.

Answer 1

What can polymorphism do that inheritance can't?

The real advantages of Polymorphism can be seen at runtime rather than compile time. Polymorphism allows you to substitute one implementation for another without the need to change the code that uses it. Let's take your example of the Animal hierarchy. Let's say you have a Vet that knows how to perform health checkups on any animal (Yup he's a supervet).

class Vet {
   private Animal animal; 
   public Vet(Animal animal) {
      this.animal = animal;
   }

   public void perfromCheckup() {
      animal.talk();
      animal.poop();
   }
} 

You can now say :

Vet vetWithBird = new Vet(new Bird());
Vet vetWithDog =  new Vet(new Dog());
vetWithBird.performCheckup();
vetWithDog.performCheckup();

Notice how you can tell the Vet to perform a checkup on a Bird or a Dog or any other animal for that matter without needing to change your Vet class. At runtime, the Dog would bark when it goes for a checkup and the Bird would tweet when it goes for a checkup. Imagine if instead of Animal, the Vet had a Bird reference :

class Vet {
   private Bird bird; 
   public Vet(Bird bird) {
      this.bird = bird;
   }

   public void perfromCheckup() {
      bird.talk();
      bird.poop();
   }
} 

The poor Vet is now only going to be able to work with a Bird. Tell your Vet to work with a Dog and he will reject this right away.

Vet vetWithBird = new Vet(new Bird()); //Works fine. Vet likes birds.
Vet vet = new Vet(new Dog())// compilation error. Sorry I don't like dogs.

In summary, Polymorphism allows you to substitute subclass instances where a super-class reference is used. Inheritance allows you to inherit code from a parent class and possibly redefine that behavior in subclasses so that your code can take advantage of it at runtime through Polymorphism

Answer 2

Inheritance refers to a feature of Java programming that lets you create classes that are derived from other classes. A class that's based on another class inherits the other class. The class that is inherited is the parent class, the base class, or the superclass.

Polymorphism refers to a programming language's ability to process objects differently depending on their data type or class. More specifically, it is the ability to redefine methods for derived classes.

You can find more information in Objects and Java by Bill Venners Chapter 7: Polymorphism and Interfaces

Answer 3

Inheritance supports Polymorphism but Polymorphism does not depend on Inheritance.

You gave an example how to achief Polymorphism via Inheritance.

But you could look at it differently:

There is an interface for the concept of moving:

interface Movable{
  void move();
}

Animals may implement this interface:

class Dog implements Movable {
  @Override
  public void move(){
    // move the animal
  }
}

but some fungis can also move:

class SlimeMold implements Movable {
  @Override
  public void move(){
    // move the animal
  }
}

There is hardly to find an "is a" relationship between those two which could be expressed by inheritance, but when both implement the same interface we can still apply Polymorphism on them:

Collection<Movable> movables = new HashSet<>();
movables.add(new Dog());
movables.add(new SlimeMold());
for(Movable movable : movables)
   movable.move();