If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it? (buttondown.email)

submitted 7 months ago by armchair_progamer@programming.dev to c/programming_languages@programming.dev

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This essay says that inheritance is harmful and if possible you should "ban inheritance completely". You see these arguments a lot, as well as things like "prefer composition to inheritance". A lot of these arguments argue that in practice inheritance has problems. But they don't preclude inheritance working in another context, maybe with a better language syntax. And it doesn't explain why inheritance became so popular in the first place. I want to explore what's fundamentally challenging about inheritance and why we all use it anyway.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] RonSijm@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

How do you “add” types together? Adding numbers makes sense, it has a real world equivalent. Two balls in a cup, add one ball and you have three balls in a cup. Add color to water and you have colored water. Simple. But types? The fuck?

It makes sense when using some fluent patterns and things like monads. For example:

User user = new User("Bob"); // User Class
UserWithPassword user = new User("Bob").WithPassword("Dylan123"); // UserWithPassword Type

A UserWithPassword type would then be a User object wrapper with some IWithPassword interface

Then you could create extension methods on IWithPassword objects and decorate those objects with password behavior

You can then have sort of polymorphic behavior by combining types together, and have different functionality available depending on which types you've added together

this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024

14 points (100.0% liked)

Programming Languages

1167 readers

1 users here now

Hello!

This is the current Lemmy equivalent of https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/.

The content and rules are the same here as they are over there. Taken directly from the /r/ProgrammingLanguages overview:

This community is dedicated to the theory, design and implementation of programming languages.

Be nice to each other. Flame wars and rants are not welcomed. Please also put some effort into your post.

This isn't the right place to ask questions such as "What language should I use for X", "what language should I learn", and "what's your favorite language". Such questions should be posted in /c/learn_programming or /c/programming.

This is the right place for posts like the following:

"Check out this new language I've been working on!"
"Here's a blog post on how I implemented static type checking into this compiler"
"I want to write a compiler, where do I start?"
"How does the Java compiler work? How does it handle forward declarations/imports/targeting multiple platforms/?"
"How should I test my compiler? How are other compilers and interpreters like gcc, Java, and python tested?"
"What are the pros/cons of ?"
"Compare and contrast vs. "
"Confused about the semantics of this language"
"Proceedings from PLDI / OOPSLA / ICFP / "

See /r/ProgrammingLanguages for specific examples

Related online communities

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

armchair_progamer@programming.dev