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"Inheritance is not code reuse".
– quant_dev
Commented Jul 2, 2011 at 21:00
2

Ok, if you insist on a perfect definition you're right. Inheritance expresses an 'is-a' relationship and it is this fact which allows for polymorphism and provides a way of extending an API. But in practice, inheritance is very very often used to reuse code. This is especially the case with multiple inheritance. And as soon as you call code of a super class you are actually reusing code.
– Jonny Dee
Commented Jul 2, 2011 at 21:33
@quant_dev: Reusability in OOP means first of all polymorphy. And inheritance is a critical point for polymorphic behaviour (sharing the interface).
– Falcon
Commented Jul 14, 2011 at 7:30
@Falcon Sharing interface != sharing code. At least not in the usual sense.
– quant_dev
Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 7:52
4

@quant_dev: You get reuseability in the OOP sense wrong. It means that a single method can operate on many datatypes, thanks to interface sharing. That's a major part of OOP code reuse. And inheritance automatically let's us share interfaces, thus enhacing code reuseability greatly. That's why we talk about reusability in OOP. Just creating libraries with routines is nearly as old as programming itself and can be done with almost every language, it's common. Code-Reuse in OOP is more than that.
– Falcon
Commented Jul 18, 2011 at 8:32

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