C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

34. SummaryDiscussionExceptionsReferences...

Avoid inheritance taxes: Inheritance is the second-tightest coupling relationship in C++, second only to friendship. Tight coupling is undesirable and should be avoided where possible....

Inheritance is often overused, even by experienced developers. A sound rule of software engineering is to minimize coupling: If a relationship can be expressed in...

Do use public inheritance to model substitutability. (See Item 37.) Even if you don't need to provide a substitutability relationship to all callers, you do need...

[Cargill92] pp. 49-65, • [Cline99] §5.9-10, 8.11-12, • [Dewhurst03] §95 • [Lakos96] §1.7, §6.• [McConnell93] §5 • [Meyers97] §40 • [Stroustrup00] §24.• [Sutter00] §22-24,...