What concept allows a derived class to inherit attributes and methods from a superclass?

Inheritance is a fundamental concept in object-oriented programming that enables a derived class to acquire the attributes and methods of a superclass. This allows for code reusability and establishes a hierarchical relationship between classes, facilitating the organization and management of code.

When a derived class inherits from a superclass, it automatically gains all the public and protected properties and methods, allowing the developer to extend or modify the functionality without rewriting existing code. This promotes a more efficient development process and a logical structure to the program.

In contrast, abstraction focuses on hiding the complex reality while exposing only the necessary parts, polymorphism allows for different classes to be treated as instances of the same class through a common interface, and encapsulation is the technique of bundling the data (attributes) and the methods (functions) that operate on the data into a single unit or class, while restricting access to some of the object's components.

In summary, inheritance is the mechanism that permits a derived class to inherit features from a superclass, which is pivotal for building scalable and maintainable code in object-oriented design.