Composition over inheritance: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 01:58, 21 January 2022

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A 2013 study of 93 open source Java programs (of varying size) found that:

{{quote|While there is not {{sic|huge}} opportunity to replace inheritance with composition (...), the opportunity is significant (median of 2% of uses [of inheritance] are only internal reuse, and a further 22% are only external or internal reuse).

Our results suggest there is no need for concern regarding abuse of inheritance (at least in open-source Java software), but they do highlight the question regarding use of composition versus inheritance. If there are significant costs associated with using inheritance when composition could be used, then our results suggest there is some cause for concern.|Tempero ''et al.'', "What programmers do with inheritance in Java"<ref>{{cite conference |last1=Tempero |first1=Ewan |first2=Hong Yul |last2=Yang |first3=James |last3=Noble |title=What programmers do with inheritance in Java |conference=ECOOP 2013–Object-Oriented Programming |year=2013 |pages=577–601 |url=https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ewan/qualitas/studies/inheritance/TemperoYangNobleECOOP2013-pre.pdf |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-39038-8_24 |isbn=978-3-642-39038-8 |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |volume=7920}}</ref>}}