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LESSON 649 OF 674 · OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

OOP Capstone — Animal Hierarchy in C#

Lesson

TL ; DR:

Put it all together: an abstract parent class, three concrete subclasses, and a polymorphic loop that dispatches by runtime type. This is the shape of nearly every real OOP design.


abstract class Animal {
    public string name;
    public Animal(string name) { this.name = name; }
    public abstract string Sound();      // each subclass picks
    public void Speak() {                 // shared by all
        Console.WriteLine(name + ": " + Sound());
    }
}
// Dog, Cat, Bird each override Sound()
// Animal[] zoo = { new Dog("Rex"), new Cat("Whiskers"), ... };
// foreach (Animal a in zoo) a.Speak();


Full lesson:

This problem stitches together everything you've learned in this chapter:

  1. Inheritance — three concrete classes share a common parent.
  2. Constructors — each subclass forwards a name to the parent.
  3. Abstract methods — the parent declares Sound() with no body; each child must provide one.
  4. Shared behavior — the parent has a concrete Speak() that calls Sound(); every subclass inherits it for free.
  5. Polymorphism — a collection typed as Animal holds a Dog, a Cat, and a Bird; Speak() dispatches to the right Sound() at runtime.

The shape of this code is the shape of nearly every real OOP design you'll see — a small contract at the top (the abstract parent), concrete variants below, and the rest of the program written against the abstract type. New variants get added without touching the consumer code.


Your task

The abstract Animal class is already defined, with a concrete Speak() that calls the abstract Sound(). Add three subclasses — Dog (returns "Woof"), Cat (returns "Meow"), and Bird (returns "Tweet"). Then in MainFunction, build a polymorphic collection holding one of each (Rex, Whiskers, Tweety in that order) and loop through it calling Speak().

Expected output:

Rex: Woof
Whiskers: Meow
Tweety: Tweet
STEP 1 OF 8
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