multimix

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• MultiMix

MultiMix

Conventional inheritance in its two main

—the 'classical' variant known from languages like Java, Python and others as well as the 'prototypal' variant known mainly from JavaScript—both assert

• that it makes sense to 'derive' one object (the 'derivative') from another (its 'antetype')

• both to conserve memory and to organize functionalities;

• that the only formally supported intentional relationship between a derivative and its antetype should be 'is-a' (to the exclusion of 'has-a', 'uses-a', 'partly-resembles-a' &c);

• that the only formally defined extensional relationship between the attributes of a derived object and those of its antetype should be take-all-or-override-all: either your derivation has an attribute x or it doesn't; if it does, it will simply override (shadow) any attribute by the same name in the antetype.

Crucially, the only way to formally derive one object from another is to provide a list of overriding features, period.