What are the differences between inheritance and polymorphism concepts in object-oriented programming?

Inheritance and polymorphism are two key principles of object-oriented programming, but they solve different problems:

• Inheritance allows creating a new class based on an existing one, inheriting its properties and methods. This promotes code reuse and the creation of class hierarchies.

• Polymorphism allows objects of different classes related by inheritance to use the same interface or method, but with different implementations. This provides flexibility and extensibility of code.

Example:

class Animal {
    void sound() {
        System.out.println("Some sound");
    }
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    @Override
    void sound() {
        System.out.println("Bark");
    }
}

class Cat extends Animal {
    @Override
    void sound() {
        System.out.println("Meow");
    }
}

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Animal a = new Dog();
        a.sound(); // Outputs "Bark" — an example of polymorphism
    }
}

Here, inheritance is creating classes Dog and Cat based on Animal, and polymorphism is calling the sound() method on an Animal reference that actually points to a Dog object, which executes the Dog's implementation.