Inheritance appears to be an ideal way to reuse code: you write it once in as generic way possible and then derive a class from the base class and reuse the code, specializing it if necessary. You will find, however, a lot of advice against this. Some people will tell you that inheritance is the worst way possible to reuse code and you should use composition instead. In fact, the situation is somewhere between the two: inheritance offers some benefits, but it should not be treated as the best or only solution.
It is possible to get carried away with designing a class library, and there is a general principle to bear in mind: the more code you write, the more maintenance you (or someone else) will have to do. If you change ...
