The term “Quine” refers to a special kind of Program (or shall I call Meta program?) that outputs its own complete source code as its only output. It is termed after the name of a philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine who did great study of indirect self references. There are certain distinct characteristics of what can be considered as Quine and what not.
Mixin
A Mixin is a class that provides a certain functionality to be inherited by a subclass, but is not meant to stand alone. Inheriting from a mixin is not a form of specialisation but is rather a means to collect functionality. A subclass may even choose to inherit most or all of its functionality by inheriting from one or more mixins through multiple Inheritance.
Important Pointers:
- Mixin is not meant to be stand alone.
- Inheriting Mixin is not a form of Specialization; It is just a mechanism to collect functionality.
- A subclass may inherit from more than one Mixin.
- A subclass may just be implementing most of its functionality by inheriting Mixin.