Why Properties cannot be Overridden?

[Ram Narayan.M]

Methods can be Overridden... But why this partiality to Properties?... Why Properties or instance variables cannot be overridden?.

[Matthew Brown]

What would overriding an instance variable mean? I just don't think it would make sense. There's no "implementation" to override. If an instance variable is private then subclasses can't access it anyway, and if it isn't subclasses can just use it.

[Ram Narayan.M]

If methods are declared private, methods also cannot be overridden... Could you please elaborate the reason?...

[Matthew Brown]

Ram Narayan.M wrote:If methods are declared private, methods also cannot be overridden... Could you please elaborate the reason?...

If a method is private, the subclass doesn't know anything about it. As far as any class other than the class it's defined in is concerned, it doesn't exist. So it can't be overridden.

A subclass can define a method with exactly the same name and signature if it wants. But then that just behaves like a completely separate method.

[Unmesh Chowdhury]

If the Java language designers let us overridden the instance variable then the instance variable need to be declared with any access modifier rather than private which will break a fundamental principle of object oriented programming, i.e., encapsulation. But, we can override the properties method in the subclasses as follows:

    
class Country {
	private String name;
	
	Country(String name) {
		this.name = name;
	}
	
	public String getName() {
		return name;
	}
	
	public void setName(String name) {
		this.name = name;
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Country cSA = new Country("South Africa");
		Country cNA = new America("North America");
		Country cB = new Bangladesh("Bangladesh");
		
		System.out.println(cSA.getName());//South Africa
		System.out.println(cNA.getName());//North America is a rich country
		System.out.println(cB.getName());//Bangladesh is a poor country
	}	
}

class America extends Country {
	America(String name) {
		super(name);
	}
	
	@Override
	public String getName() {
		return super.getName() + " is a rich country";
	}
}

class Bangladesh extends Country {
	Bangladesh(String name) {
		super(name);
	}
	
	@Override
	public String getName() {
		return super.getName() + " is a poor country";
	}
}