OOP Difference between a derived class and an inherited class?

Question

From an OOP point of view is there any difference between a derived class and an inherited class? Or is it simply terminology?

Solution 1

When using inheritance, the inherited class is called the base class, and the inheriting class is called the derived class.

Solution 2

Neil's answer confused me a bit, and so I checked some public sources.

Consider a Base Class and a Sub Class (SubClass extends BaseClass in Java terminology), than

• the Sub Class derives Base Class (Sub Class is a derived class of Base Class) and
• the Sub Class inherits from Base Class (Base Class is a/the inherited class of Sub Class)

So in my opinion both terms define the same relationship between to classes but from different perspectives.

Comments

[Admin]

Completely changing te text of your answer to mirror another user's answer is not considered good form here on SO.

[Vinko Vrsalovic]

@Neil: On the contrary. Editing your answer to make it the best possible answer is what SO is all about. Of course that plagiarizing is not nice, but I find the edit an improvement based on your answer, not a blatant copy, especially since your answer was C++ specific (there was no need to make it specific, but you did.)

[Admin]

The term subclass isn't commonly used in C++ - I don't know about Java - and the OP didn't ask about it.

[Admin]

@Vinko There was a need need to make it specific - different languages use different nomenclatures. For example, a Smalltalk programmer would talk about superclass and subclass rather than base and derived.

[Vinko Vrsalovic]

@Neil: Well then, if you think so you now have an opportunity to improve your answer and make it better than the answer based on your own.

[Vinko Vrsalovic]

BTW, given the question, I don't think there is a need to be language specific. The question is about inherited and derived and, while some languages might out front not use those terms at all, I doubt there is any language where the terms are used and represent different things. In case such language existed, that would be a worthy addition to an answer.

[Anton Kuzmin]

I changed my answer because I realized I was wrong when I was googling a bit just to make sure I wrote a correct answer.