Chapter 8. Classes and Inheritance

How many .NET programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Nonethey call a method on the light bulb object, and it changes itself. Ha, ha, ha! That's funny, but only if you understand the object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts that are the basic foundation of the .NET system. (Actually, it's not even that funny if you do understand OOP.) Without OOP, it would be difficult to support core features of .NET, such as the central System.Object object, which is the basic foundation of the .NET system. Also, productivity would go way down among Windows developers, who are the basic foundation of the .NET system.

Although I briefly mentioned OOP development concepts in both Chapters 1, "Introducing .NET," and 2, "Introducing Visual Basic," it was only to provide some context for other topics of discussion. But in this chapter, I hold back no longer. After a vigorous discussion of general OOP concepts, I'll discuss how you can use these concepts in your .NET code.