Question

I was going over the official Oracle tutorial where it introduces the idea of polymorphism with the example of a class hierarchy of 3 classes; Bicycle being the superclass, and MountainBike and RoadBike being 2 subclasses.

It shows how the 2 subclasses override a method “printDescription” declared in Bicycle, by declaring different versions of it.

And finally, toward the end, the tutorial mentions the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) calls the appropriate method for the object that is referred to in each variable.

But, nowhere does the tutorial on polymorphism mention the concept of “abstract” classes and methods. How is run-time polymorphism achieved unless printDescription() in Bicycle is declared “abstract”? I mean, given this example, based on what hints does the compiler decide not to bind method invocation to the reference type at compile time, and think that it should leave it for the JVM to deal with at run-time?

Below is the example used:

public class Bicycle {
    public int cadence;
    public int gear;
    public int speed;

    public Bicycle(int startCadence, int startSpeed, int startGear) {
      gear = startGear;
      cadence = startCadence;
      speed = startSpeed;
    }

    public void setCadence(int newValue) {
      cadence = newValue;
    }

    public void setGear(int newValue) {
      gear = newValue;
    }

    public void applyBrake(int decrement) {
      speed -= decrement;
    }

    public void speedUp(int increment) {
      speed += increment;
    }

    public void printDescription(){
        System.out.println("\nBike is " + "in gear " + this.gear
         + " with a cadence of " + this.cadence +
         " and travelling at a speed of " + this.speed + ". ");
    }

}

public class MountainBike extends Bicycle {
  private String suspension;

  public MountainBike(
           int startCadence,
           int startSpeed,
           int startGear,
           String suspensionType){
    super(startCadence,
          startSpeed,
          startGear);
    this.setSuspension(suspensionType);
  }

  public String getSuspension(){
    return this.suspension;
  }

  public void setSuspension(String suspensionType) {
    this.suspension = suspensionType;
  }

  public void printDescription() {
    super.printDescription();
    System.out.println("The " + "MountainBike has a" +
        getSuspension() + " suspension.");
  }

}

public class RoadBike extends Bicycle{

  private int tireWidth;

  public RoadBike(int startCadence,
                int startSpeed,
                int startGear,
                int newTireWidth){
    super(startCadence,
          startSpeed,
          startGear);
    this.setTireWidth(newTireWidth);
  }

  public int getTireWidth(){
    return this.tireWidth;
  }

  public void setTireWidth(int newTireWidth){
    this.tireWidth = newTireWidth;
  }

  public void printDescription(){
    super.printDescription();
    System.out.println("The RoadBike"
        " has " + getTireWidth() +
        " MM tires.");
  }
}


public class TestBikes {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        Bicycle bike01, bike02, bike03;

      bike01 = new Bicycle(20, 10, 1);
      bike02 = new MountainBike(20, 10, 5, "Dual");
      bike03 = new RoadBike(40, 20, 8, 23);

      bike01.printDescription();
      bike02.printDescription();
      bike03.printDescription();
      }
}

Answer 1

How is run-time polymorphism achieved unless printDescription() in
Bicycle is declared “abstract”?

Why would you think abstract classes would change anything? Abstract classes do 2 primary things

1. Allow the programmer to declare a class that cannot itself be instantiated, forcing subclassing, and
2. Allow the programmer to force subclasses to provide implementations of methods, by declaring the method abstract.

Note that point 2 does not imply that polymorphism won’t work unless a method is declared abstract on the base class; rather, it provides the developer an opportunity to force a subclass to provide an implementation, which is not required in subclassing scenarios that don’t involve any abstract usage.

That’s it. In other words, the notion of abstract compliments Java’s polymorphism — it is a language feature, but doesn’t have anything to do with the dynamic dispatch Java uses at runtime to invoke methods. Anytime a method is invoked on an instance, the type of the instance at runtime is used to determine which method implementation to use.