Chapter 13. When and How to Use Inheritance
The mechanism of inheritance is provided in some form by most modern programming languages. However, its improper use can lead to brittle, unnecessarily inflexible architectures that sacrifice encapsulation for little or no gain. This should not, however, lead a developer to conclude that inheritance is bad, or even that it should be used in a minimal, last-resort way. The real question is, what is inheritance good for, and when should it be used?
The Gang of Four
In their seminal book on design patterns,1 Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides (who are often affectionately referred to as the “Gang of Four”) issued several important pieces of general advice on software design. ...
Get Essential Skills for the Agile Developer: A Guide to Better Programming and Design now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
