Is Inheritance really needed?

Question

I must confess I\'m somewhat of an OOP skeptic. Bad pedagogical and laboral experiences with object orientation didn\'t help. So I converted into a fervent believer in Visua

Answer 1

No.

for me, OOP is mostly about encapsulation of state and behavior and polymorphism.

and that is. but if you want static type checking, you'll need some way to group different types, so the compiler can check while still allowing you to use new types in place of another, related type. creating a hierarchy of types lets you use the same concept (classes) for types and for groups of types, so it's the most widely used form.

but there are other ways, i think the most general would be duck typing, and closely related, prototype-based OOP (which isn't inheritance in fact, but it's usually called prototype-based inheritance).