Composition and Inheritance are two popular design patterns in software development that help programmers reuse code, build scalable applications, and make code more maintainable. Here is a brief explanation of both patterns:
Composition: In composition, classes are combined to form more complex objects. Instead of inheriting properties and methods from a base class, the class instantiates other objects and uses them as properties. This means that the composed class contains an instance of another class, and it uses the methods and properties of that class to perform its own functions.
Composition is a more flexible approach because it allows components to be glued together at runtime with no predefined knowledge of what they are composed of. It leads to less complex code and better separation of concerns.
Inheritance: Inheritance is a mechanism in object-oriented programming where one class is based on another, inheriting its properties and methods. In this paradigm, the child class is a specialized version of the base class, and it can add additional functionality or override methods defined in the parent class.
While inheritance can be useful in some cases, it can also lead to tightly coupled code and make it difficult to evolve the system over time.
In summary, composition and inheritance are two different approaches to code reuse and are suitable for different situations. Composition favors flexibility, loose coupling, and code reuse through aggregation, while inheritance favors code reuse by extending existing code.
