Abstract

This note explains why general multiple inheritance is contra-intuitive in object-oriented programming. Firstly, we show some problems which occur when using general multiple inheritance. Secondly, we analyze the purposes for which multiple inheritance is used in large and complex software systems according to our experience. This provides arguments for our rejection of general multiple inheritance. Instead of it, a more specific multiple inheritance scheme called mixin should be provided. On the one hand, this would secure that the programmer's intuition and the behaviour of the inheritance algorithm always agree and, on the other hand, we obtain the same performance the single inheritance languages do.

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