A case against inheritance
Provocative title, right? Good. The point is not that inheritance is all that bad, it's that you should stop and think or a moment before you jump into long inheritance chains and complex UML.
In fact, the Object-Oriented Design Patterns book from "the gang of four" has this to say about inheritance:
“Prefer object composition to class inheritance”
It’s pretty easy to follow this advice in JavaScript. Remember - no classes in JavaScript. And how about the object literal, how simple it is? If you can add functionality to your objects from elsewhere – why do you need inheritance.
You can start with a blank slate and add stuff – either implement it yourself or grab from someone else.
Keep your eyes on the prize. You don’t need inheritance, you need functionality. In other languages inheritance may be your only choice. Not in JavaScript.
Further blog posts will show patterns such as borrowing methods, copying properties, mixins...
Tags: Code reuse patterns, inheritance