Inheritance or composition for a more advanced implementation of a class?

Question

So i have a class called VirtualMouse, it is used to perform mouse actions such as moving and clicking.

public class VirtualMouse
{
 public VirtualMouse()
 {
 }
 public void MoveByOffset(int offsetX, int offsetY)
 {
 // Implementation.
 }
 public void MoveToPosition(Point position)
 {
 // Implementation.
 }
 public void ClickLeftButton()
 {
 // Implementation.
 }
 public void PressLeftButton()
 {
 // Implementation.
 }
 public void ReleaseLeftButton()
 {
 // Implementation.
 }
}

This is to implement basic mouse automation. Now I also wanna have the ability to create a class that is specialized, for example a HumanVirtualMouse which would have the same methods but would move the mouse in a human like way.

Should I inherit from VirtualMouse and call the base class methods in succession to create human patterns(for example I can use MoveByOffset inside a loop) or have an instance of VirtualMouse inside the HumanMouse class?

I guess i should favor inheritance because HumanMouse is-a VirtualMouse and i only need to modify the movement methods, click, press and release remain the same...

• Robert Harvey: Sounds reasonable to me.
• Apalala: Possible duplicate of Why should I prefer composition over inheritance?
• Hieu Le: Can you tell more about the HumanVirtualMouse class, please? I am not clear what is "in a human-like way" in your question.
• Joao Vitor: It uses a series of points calculated by another method, these points describe a curve which will make the mouse move in a "Human" fashion, not in an instant robotic way.
• Laiv: Do you want both classes to be interchangable? Use one or another indistinctly?

Answer 1

From your description and the comment, it does not sound like you want a derived class HumanVirtualMouse. It seems you want a component which generates certain calls to MoveToPosition (or the other methods) to a virtual mouse object, something like a HumanLikeMouseController. Overriding those "Move" methods does not look necessary, not even very useful to me.

Thus I see no benefit in using inheritance here. In fact, my mental model is one of a mouse on one hand, and someone or something separate controlling it - and the code should reflect that model.

• Robert Harvey: Agreed, it fails the "is a" test.