Go's embedding is no inheritance

Go's embedding is no inheritance.md

In a language with inheritance the following code would print "Child". But in Go the following prints "Parent".

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

type Hello interface {
    Hello()
}

type Parent struct{}

func (this Parent) Hello() {
    fmt.Printf("%T\n", this)
}

type Child struct {
    Parent
}

func main() {
    c := Child{}
    c.Hello()
}

In a language with inheritance, the child gets a copy of the parent's functionality: Each inherited method thinks of itself as a child. But in Go the child gets just a copy of the parent: Each embedded method continues to think of itself as a parent.

The syntactic suguar, which allows to call embedded methods with the child as a receiver is missleading. Although you call the method with the child as a receiver, the actual receiver of the method call is the copy of the parent.