[sanderjd]

No, inheritance is not an elegant way to mix in shared data and behavior. It can seem like it is in a simple case where there is only one set of data and behavior you want to mix in, but it scales very poorly. Nothing is fundamentally a single kind of thing, and multiple inheritance is a mess. It is more elegant to mix the behavior in through delegation, because it scales to however many things you want to mix in. Carrying on the synthetic example in this thread, you can mix in Speed and Pedals into Bicycle but Speed and Cylinders into Car.