MI Hownotto by Betrand Meyer

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

This week's EiffelWorld column by Bertrand Meyer has a note
about construction procedures and multiple inheritance.
I thought it might be interesting given a recent discussion
in c.l.ada.

<quote ref="EiffelWorld Electronic Newsletter -- Vol. 33, No 2, Section 4">
In particular, multiple inheritance just doesn't go well with the
C++ idea, also retained in Java and C#, that a constructor (creation
procedure) must start its execution by calling the constructor of
its parent. As soon as you require this you are ruling out multiple
inheritance, since with two parents or more there's no good reason for
executing a particular parent's constructor before the others'; and
the situation becomes even more hazy when these parents have a common
ancestor -- repeated inheritance, the so called "diamond" structure.
Hence complicated rules that probably about twelve people in the world
understand, and fewer remember.</quote>