A Comparative Study on the Effect of Multiple Inheritance Mechanism in Java, C++, and Python on Complexity and Reusability of Code

Abstract

Two of the fundamental uses of generalization in object-oriented software development are the reusability of code and better structuring of the description of objects. Multiple inheritance is one of the important features of object-oriented methodologies which enables developers to combine concepts and increase the reusability of the resulting software. However, multiple inheritance is implemented differently in commonly used programming languages. In this paper, we use Chidamber and Kemerer (CK) metrics to study the complexity and reusability of multiple inheritance as implemented in Python, Java, and C++. The analysis of results suggests that out of the three languages investigated Python and C++ offer better reusability of software when using multiple inheritance, whereas Java has major deficiencies when implementing multiple inheritance resulting in poor structure of objects.

Comparison of C++ and Java in Implementing Introductory Programming Algorithms

“…Multiple inheritance is an essential feature of object-oriented programming in which a class inherits the features from single or multiple parents. Albalooshi and Mahmood [34] studied the implementation of multiple inheritance in C++, Java and Python and analysed the complexity and reusability with Chidamber and Kemerer metrics. The study suggested that C++ and Python support better reusability with multiple inheritance; whereas, Java has poor structure of objects in the implementation of multiple inheritance.…”