What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Delegation pattern?

The Delegation pattern involves passing responsibility for executing a task to another object.

Advantages:

• Allows responsibilities to be divided between classes, improving code readability and maintainability.
• Reduces code duplication, as one object can utilize the functionality of another.
• Increases flexibility and extensibility, as the delegated object can be changed without modifying the caller.

Disadvantages:

• Can complicate the code structure due to a large number of intermediate calls.
• Excessive use of delegation may lead to difficulties in tracking the flow of execution.

Example in Android: an Activity class delegates user interface event handling to a separate listener object.