Composition vs Inheritance

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“Has-a” vs “is-a” relationships. Favor composition for flexibility — compose objects by combining simpler behaviors rather than creating deep inheritance hierarchies. Composition allows changing behavior at runtime and avoids tight coupling between parent and child classes.

Key Properties

• Has-A Relationship
• Delegation
• Mixins and Traits

Related

• Inheritance (contrast)
• Strategy (composition-based pattern)
• Decorator (composition-based pattern)

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oop composition inheritance