Why is Multiple Inheritance not allowed in Java or C#?

The short answer is: because the language designers decided not to.

Basically, it seemed that both the .NET and Java designers did not allow multiple inheritance because they reasoned that adding MI added too much complexity to the languages while providing too little benefit.

For a more fun and in-depth read, there are some articles available on the web with interviews of some of the language designers. For example, for .NET, Chris Brumme (who worked at MS on the CLR) has explained the reasons why they decided not to:

1. Different languages actually have different expectations for how MI works. For example, how conflicts are resolved and whether duplicate bases are merged or redundant. Before we can implement MI in the CLR, we have to do a survey of all the languages, figure out the common concepts, and decide how to express them in a language-neutral manner. We would also have to decide whether MI belongs in the CLS and what this would mean for languages that don't want this concept (presumably VB.NET, for example). Of course, that's the business we are in as a common language runtime, but we haven't got around to doing it for MI yet.

2. The number of places where MI is truly appropriate is actually quite small. In many cases, multiple interface inheritance can get the job done instead. In other cases, you may be able to use encapsulation and delegation. If we were to add a slightly different construct, like mixins, would that actually be more powerful?

3. Multiple implementation inheritance injects a lot of complexity into the implementation. This complexity impacts casting, layout, dispatch, field access, serialization, identity comparisons, verifiability, reflection, generics, and probably lots of other places.

You can read the full article here.

For Java, you can read this article:

The reasons for omitting multiple inheritance from the Java language mostly stem from the "simple, object oriented, and familiar" goal. As a simple language, Java's creators wanted a language that most developers could grasp without extensive training. To that end, they worked to make the language as similar to C++ as possible (familiar) without carrying over C++'s unnecessary complexity (simple).

In the designers' opinion, multiple inheritance causes more problems and confusion than it solves. So they cut multiple inheritance from the language (just as they cut operator overloading). The designers' extensive C++ experience taught them that multiple inheritance just wasn't worth the headache.

Multiple inheritance of implementation is what is not allowed.

The problem is that the compiler/runtime cannot figure out what to do if you have a Cowboy and an Artist class, both with implementations for the draw() method, and then you try to create a new CowboyArtist type. What happens when you call the draw() method? Is someone lying dead in the street, or do you have a lovely watercolor?

I believe it's called the double diamond inheritance problem.

Because Java has a greatly different design philosophy from C++. (I'm not going to discuss C# here.)

In designing C++, Stroustrup wanted to include useful features, regardless of how they could be misused. It's possible to screw up big-time with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, templates, and various other features, but it's also possible to do some very good things with them.

The Java design philosophy is to emphasize safety in language constructs. The result is that there are things that are a lot more awkward to do, but you can be a lot more confident that the code you're looking at means what you think it does.

Further, Java was to a large extent a reaction from C++ and Smalltalk, the best known OO languages. There are plenty of other OO languages (Common Lisp was actually the first one to be standardized), with different OO systems that handle MI better.

Not to mention that it's entirely possible to do MI in Java, using interfaces, composition, and delegation. It's more explicit than in C++, and therefore is clumsier to use but will get you something you're more likely to understand at first glance.

There is no right answer here. There are different answers, and which one is better for a given situation depends on applications and individual preference.

The main (although by no means the only) reason people steer away from MI is the so called "diamond problem" leading to ambiguity in your implementation. This wikipedia article discusses it and explains better than I could. MI can also lead to more complex code, and a lot of OO designers claim that you do't need MI, and if you do use it your model is probably wrong. I'm not sure I agree with this last point, but keeping things simple is always a good plan.

In C++ multiple inheritance was a major headache when used improperly. To avoid those popular design issues multiple interfaces "inheritance" was forced instead in modern languages (java, C#).

Multiple Inheritance is

• hard to understand
• hard to debug (for example, if you mix classes from multiple frameworks that have identically-named methods deep down, quite unexpected synergies can occur)
• easy to mis-use
• not really that useful
• hard to implement, especially if you want it done correctly and efficiently

Therefore, it can be considered a wise choice to not include Multiple Inheritance into the Java language.

Another reason is that single-inheritance makes casting trivial, emitting no assembler instructions (other than checking for the compatibility of the types where required). If you had multiple-inheritance, you'd need to figure out where in the child class a certain parent starts. So performance is certainly a perk (although not the only one).

Back in the old days ('70s) when Computer Science was more Science and less mass production the programmers had time to think about good design and good implementation and as a result the products (programms) had high quality ( eg. TCP/IP design and implementation ). Nowadays, when everybody is programming, and the managers are changing the specs before deadlines, subtle issues like the one descriped in the wikipedia link from Steve Haigh post are difficult to track; therefore, the "multiple inheritance" is limited by compiler design. If you like it, you can still use C++ .... and have all the freedom you want :)

I take the statement that "Multiple inheritance is not allowed in Java" with a pinch of salt.

Multiple Inheritance is defined when a "Type" inherits from more than one "Types". And interfaces are also classified as types as they have behavior. So Java does have multiple inheritance. Just that it is safer.

In C++ a class can inherit (directly or indirectly) from more than one class, which is referred to as multiple inheritance.

C# and Java, however, limit classes to single inheritance each class inherits from a single parent class.

Multiple inheritance is a useful way to create classes that combine aspects of two disparate class hierarchies, something that often happens when using different class frameworks within a single application.

If two frameworks define their own base classes for exceptions, for example, you can use multiple inheritance to create exception classes that can be used with either framework.

The problem with multiple inheritance is that it can lead to ambiguity. The classic example is when a class inherits from two other classes, each of which inherits from the same class:

class A {
    protected:
    bool flag;
};
class B : public A {};
class C : public A {};
class D : public B, public C {
    public:
    void setFlag( bool nflag ){
        flag = nflag; // ambiguous
    }
};

In this example, the flag data member is defined by class A. But class D descends from class B and class C, which both derive from A, so in essence two copies of flag are available because two instances of A are in D’s class hierarchy. Which one do you want to set? The compiler will complain that the reference to flag in D is ambiguous. One fix is to explicitly disambiguate the reference:

B::flag = nflag;

Another fix is to declare B and C as virtual base classes, which means that only one copy of A can exist in the hierarchy, eliminating any ambiguity.

Other complexities exist with multiple inheritance, such as the order in which the base classes are initialized when a derived object is constructed, or the way members can be inadvertently hidden from derived classes. To avoid these complexities, some languages restrict themselves to the simpler single inheritance model.

Although this does simplify inheritance considerably, it also limits its usefulness because only classes with a common ancestor can share behaviors. Interfaces mitigate this restriction somewhat by allowing classes in different hierarchies to expose common interfaces even if they’re not implemented by sharing code.