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Composition and inheritance. I am aware that they are both tools to be chosen when appropriate, and context is very important in choosing between composition and inheritance. However, the discussion about the appropriate context for each is usually a little fuzzy; this has me beginning to consider just how distinctly inheritance and polymorphism are separate aspects of traditional OOP. Polymorphism allows one to specify "is-a" relationships equally as well as inheritance. Particularly, inheriting from a base class implicitly creates a polymorphic relationship between that class and its subclasses. However, whereas polymorphism can be implemented using pure interfaces, inheritance complicates the polymorphic relationship by simultaneously transferring implementation details. In this way, inheritance is quite distinct from pure polymorphism. As a tool, inheritance serves programmers differently than polymorphism (through pure interfaces) by simplifying implementation re-use in trivial cases . In the majority of cases, however, the implementation details of a superclass subtly conflict with the requirements of a subclass. This is why we have "overrides" and "member hiding". In these cases, the implementation re-use offered by inheritance is purchased with the added effort of verifying state changes and execution paths across cascading levels of code: the complete "flattened" implementation details of the subclass are spread between multiple classes, which usually means multiple files, of which only portions apply to the subclass in question. Looking through that hierarchy is absolutely necessary when dealing with inheritance, because without looking at the code of the superclass, there is no way to know what un-overidden details are monkeying with your state or diverting your execution. In comparison, exclusive use of composition guarantees you will see what state can be modified by explicitly instanti

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