Is it Wrong to?

Question

Am I doing something wrong if I pass an instance of a base class as a parameter of the inherited class constructor? I'm teaching myself C# so I'm learning as I go.

Vulpes · Answer

Well those object-based languages which don't support inheritance often use a technique known as 'containment' where class B includes an instance of class A rather than inheriting from it.You then have to write methods in class B which expose A's public methods. So it sounds like what you're doing is an attempt to use containment rather than inheritance. I don't think there's anything wrong with this as long as you don't use inheritance at the same time - indeed there are developers who actually prefer to use containment rather than inheritance even though the language supports the latter. My own view is that containment is a lot more work and so being a bit lazy I tend to stick with inheritance :)