Can inheritance be used to create designs that are more flexible than those which leverage composition?

Inheritance is a fundamental concept in object-oriented programming that allows a class to inherit properties and behaviors (methods) from another class. This can indeed facilitate design flexibility in certain scenarios. However, relying primarily on inheritance can lead to complications, particularly with regard to the rigidity of class hierarchies and the difficulties involved in making changes to a deep inheritance structure.

The correct understanding here is that composition is often favored over inheritance when it comes to building flexible designs. Composition involves constructing classes using instances of other classes, which allows developers to include and reuse behaviors without being tightly bound by a class hierarchy. This approach enables more modular designs, where behaviors can be swapped or modified without affecting the entire system.

In practice, this means that when a project requires adaptability—where components might need to change or evolve independently—composition typically provides a more flexible architecture compared to inheritance. Therefore, while inheritance can create flexible designs under certain conditions, composition tends to be the preferred method for achieving flexibility in most programming paradigms.