Unexpected Behavior with Inheritance and Method Overriding in Java 17
I'm stuck trying to Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm facing an issue with method overriding in my Java 17 application. I have a base class `Animal` that defines a method `makeSound()`, and two subclasses, `Dog` and `Cat`, that override this method. However, when I call `makeSound()` on a reference of type `Animal` pointing to an instance of `Dog`, the output is not what I expect. Here’s a simplified version of my code: ```java class Animal { public String makeSound() { return "Some generic animal sound"; } } class Dog extends Animal { @Override public String makeSound() { return "Bark"; } } class Cat extends Animal { @Override public String makeSound() { return "Meow"; } } public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { Animal myDog = new Dog(); System.out.println(myDog.makeSound()); Animal myCat = new Cat(); System.out.println(myCat.makeSound()); } } ``` When I run this code, I expect to see "Bark" and "Meow" printed to the console. Instead, I am getting "Some generic animal sound" for both calls. I’ve double-checked that I'm not accidentally using an instance of `Animal` directly. I've also ensured that the classes are compiled correctly and that there are no other `Animal` instances in the code. Could it be that I'm missing something with the classpath or the way I'm compiling my Java files? I also tried using an IDE and running it from the command line, but the result remains the same. Any insights on why this might be happening would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is Linux. The project is a mobile app built with Java. What are your experiences with this?