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The term inheritance is loosely used for both class-based and prototype-based programming, but in narrow use the term is reserved for class-based programming (one class inherits from another), with the corresponding technique in prototype-based programming being instead called delegation (one object delegates to another). Class-modifying ...
Composition over inheritance (or composite reuse principle) in object-oriented programming (OOP) is the principle that classes should favor polymorphic behavior and code reuse by their composition (by containing instances of other classes that implement the desired functionality) over inheritance from a base or parent class. [2]
JavaScript is perhaps the best known prototype-based programming language, which employs cloning from prototypes rather than inheriting from a class (contrast to class-based programming). Another scripting language that takes this approach is Lua .
Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which behavior reuse (known as inheritance) is performed via a process of reusing existing objects that serve as prototypes. This model can also be known as prototypal , prototype-oriented, classless , or instance-based programming.
In class-based programming, inheritance is done by defining new classes as extensions of existing classes: the existing class is the parent class and the new class is the child class. If a child class has only one parent class, this is known as single inheritance , while if a child class can have more than one parent class, this is known as ...
On the other hand, inheritance can be statically type-checked, while delegation generally cannot without generics (although a restricted version of delegation can be statically typesafe [7]). Delegation can be termed "run-time inheritance for specific objects." Here is a pseudocode example in a C#/Java like language:
Not all languages support multiple inheritance. For example, Java allows a class to implement multiple interfaces, but only inherit from one class. [22] If multiple inheritance is allowed, the hierarchy is a directed acyclic graph (or DAG for short), otherwise it is a tree. The hierarchy has classes as nodes and inheritance relationships as links.
Agora is a reflective, prototype-based, object-oriented programming language that is based exclusively on message passing and not delegation.Agora was intended to show that even subject to that limit, it is possible to build a full object-oriented language that features inheritance, cloning, and reflective operators.