Misapplying Inheritance

Under the premise that the journey is more useful than the destination, and that experiencing common mistakes by proxy is less painful than experiencing them in person, this next section continues to show code that is unworthy of emulation. The code illustrates common difficulties encountered by novices. If you are practiced at using inheritance and are comfortable with these techniques, feel free to skim. However, if you are new to inheritance, or you find that all of your attempts go awry, then follow along carefully.

The following is a first attempt at a MountainBike subclass. This new subclass is a direct descendent of the original Bicycle class. It implements two methods, initialize and spares. Both of these methods are already implemented in Bicycle, therefore, they are said to be overridden by MountainBike.