How Rust Handles Inheritance: Composition and Traits Replace Class Hierarchies

Rust does not support classical inheritance as seen in C++ or Java, instead relying on structs, traits, and composition to achieve code reuse. A developer maintaining epdsi, a no_std e-paper display driver crate, encountered this distinction while modeling two chip families where sibling controllers share most logic. In Rust, shared behavior is wrapped as an inner struct field, and each method must be manually forwarded, unlike Java where subclasses inherit everything automatically via extends. Traits with default methods offer partial relief but cannot share fields across types, leaving delegation boilerplate to be written by hand. The article illustrates how Rust's design philosophy favors explicit composition over implicit inheritance, trading conciseness for clarity and control.