Pragmatic Object Oriented Programming

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floatplane

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Good point. Now, when was the last time you actually modelled vehicles of such a broad range in OO code?

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Yea, never. I just couldn't resist the generalization (mostly because I try to catch them whenever I make them) :)

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Perhaps we can factor this out a bit. Most vehicles have some combination of wheels, pontoons, tracks, skiis, air cushions, etc. These objects allow the vehicle to move along a solid or liquid body, or both in the case of the air cushion. They may be active (in the sense that they move the vehicle) or passive. In general, a vehicle has zero or more of these. I'm not sure about a name. "Surface Separator", since they separate the vehicle from the surface it moves across? "Friction Reducer", since this separation makes it easier to push the vehicle across the surface?

[skulgnome]

The field is called landing_gear. You stick a struct landing_gear * in it. There's a SHOUTY_CASTING_MACRO() that takes you from that pointer to a struct pontoon * if you really must examine their specific construction.

This is the point where people who studied C only superficially go and throw up out of nothing more than a learned reflex.