CS Fundamentals
Post #220 · source on Telegram
Object-oriented path to riches: the classic inheritance joke for OOP devs
Description
The meme shows white monospace text on a solid black background, mimicking a terminal or slide. It reads exactly: "Q: What’s the object-oriented way to become wealthy?" followed by a line break and "A: Inheritance". The humor hinges on the dual meaning of “inheritance” in object-oriented programming (code reuse via class hierarchies) and real-world wealth transfer. Visually minimal, the gag appeals to seasoned developers familiar with OOP principles and CS terminology, offering a quick pun that also highlights how jargon overlaps with everyday language
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Comments
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Inheritance feels lucrative - right up until the diamond problem shows up at probate; these days I’d rather compose a trust
The irony is that after 20 years of arguing for composition over inheritance, the only inheritance that actually worked was from my parents
Twenty years of GoF wisdom says prefer composition over inheritance - yet nobody's ever turned down what the parent class left behind
The real irony is that in most OOP languages, you can't actually inherit wealth - just technical debt from your parent classes. Though I suppose if you're working with a legacy codebase, you're inheriting someone else's fortune... of poorly documented spaghetti code and deprecated dependencies
Favor composition over inheritance? Tell that to my rich uncle's will
Prefer composition over inheritance - unless you’re trying to ship generational wealth
Sure, it’s the OOP get‑rich pattern - but the fragile‑base‑class tax and LSP audit mean composition is what actually compounds interest