Why single inheritance in Ruby - See It in Action

Understanding Single Inheritance in Ruby

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are building a simple program to manage different types of vehicles. You want to reuse common features like starting the engine and honking the horn, but also add specific features for cars and bikes.

🎯 Goal: You will create a base class Vehicle with common methods, then create a subclass Car that inherits from Vehicle. This will show how single inheritance works in Ruby and why Ruby uses it.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a class called Vehicle with methods start_engine and honk

Create a subclass called Car that inherits from Vehicle

Add a method open_trunk to Car

Create an instance of Car and call all three methods

Print the outputs of the method calls

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Single inheritance helps organize code by sharing common features in one place, like a base vehicle class for different vehicle types.

💼 Career

Understanding inheritance is key for Ruby developers to write clean, reusable, and maintainable code in real projects.

1

Create the base class Vehicle

Create a class called Vehicle with two methods: start_engine that returns the string "Engine started" and honk that returns the string "Beep beep".

Ruby

# Create class Vehicle with methods start_engine and honk
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use class Vehicle to start the class. Define methods with def and return strings.

2

Create subclass Car inheriting from Vehicle

Create a class called Car that inherits from Vehicle. Inside Car, add a method open_trunk that returns the string "Trunk opened".

Ruby

class Vehicle
  def start_engine
    "Engine started"
  end

  def honk
    "Beep beep"
  end
end

# Create class Car inheriting from Vehicle with method open_trunk
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use class Car < Vehicle to inherit. Define open_trunk method inside.

3

Create an instance of Car and call methods

Create an instance called my_car of the class Car. Call the methods start_engine, honk, and open_trunk on my_car and store their results in variables engine_status, horn_sound, and trunk_status respectively.

Ruby

class Vehicle
  def start_engine
    "Engine started"
  end

  def honk
    "Beep beep"
  end
end

class Car < Vehicle
  def open_trunk
    "Trunk opened"
  end
end

# Create instance my_car and call methods, store results
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Create instance with Car.new. Call methods on my_car and assign to variables.

4

Print the results

Print the values of engine_status, horn_sound, and trunk_status each on a new line.

Ruby

class Vehicle
  def start_engine
    "Engine started"
  end

  def honk
    "Beep beep"
  end
end

class Car < Vehicle
  def open_trunk
    "Trunk opened"
  end
end

my_car = Car.new
engine_status = my_car.start_engine
horn_sound = my_car.honk
trunk_status = my_car.open_trunk

# Print the results below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use puts to print each variable on its own line.