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  • Well, an ugly solution for an ugly problem: Your examples are the prime motivation for the introduction of virtual inheritance in C++. Behind all these facades is always just a single person. In fact, this may be the best rationale for virtual inheritance I've read in a while (I didn't understand Stroustrup's reasoning, for example). So you could "compose by (multiple) inheritance" ;-). Commented Feb 16, 2022 at 16:39
  • Many TAs and some teachers are Phd students. And what about Student-teachers? We don't need to look vey far for real examples of this. Commented Feb 16, 2022 at 18:18
  • @Peter Virtual inheritance doesn't solve this. If you have two objects inheriting the same person, you have two instances of the same person, whether virtual or non-virtual inheritance. What you need is that Teacher, Student etc. hold a reference to the same Person object. Commented Feb 16, 2022 at 19:24
  • @gnasher Hm, true, I had in mind to have a class hierarchy student:virtual public person and a teacher:virtual public person and then create a teaching_student:teacher,student which would have only one person subobject. But composition is much better because it could change roles dynamically. Commented Feb 16, 2022 at 20:50
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    The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Codd Commented Feb 17, 2022 at 9:09