In Programming Python, Mark Lutz mentions the term mixin. I am from a C/C++/C# background and I have not heard the term before. What is a mixin?
Reading between the lines of this example (which I have linked to because it is quite long), I am presuming it is a case of using multiple inheritance to extend a class as opposed to proper subclassing. Is this right?
Why would I want to do that rather than put the new functionality into a subclass? For that matter, why would a mixin/multiple inheritance approach be better than using composition?
What separates a mixin from multiple inheritance? Is it just a matter of semantics?
