Wow, November 2026, an article about inheritance in objected oriented programming appears! This is great!
The author basically writes that equating inheritance with ontology causes problems. I suggest that very equation arises from the to be verb of the English language. Using forms of "to be" (like the "is" in the "is-a" of inheritance) often leads people to false equivalences, category errors and other mistakes. I personally try to avoid "to be" forms in business and technical writing because of the ease of errors. Is-a relationships lead people, and now LLMs, to confuse programming domain types with problem domain categories mostly due to the ambiguity of the "to be" verb.
The author basically writes that equating inheritance with ontology causes problems. I suggest that very equation arises from the to be verb of the English language. Using forms of "to be" (like the "is" in the "is-a" of inheritance) often leads people to false equivalences, category errors and other mistakes. I personally try to avoid "to be" forms in business and technical writing because of the ease of errors. Is-a relationships lead people, and now LLMs, to confuse programming domain types with problem domain categories mostly due to the ambiguity of the "to be" verb.