Can you explain the concept of inversion of control and its role in software development?

Inversion of Control (IoC) is a design principle where the control flow of a program is transferred to an external container or framework, rather than being implemented directly in the application code.

Instead of an object creating and managing dependencies itself, these dependencies are injected from outside (for example, through a constructor or setter). This increases modularity, simplifies testing, and makes code maintenance easier.

In Java, this is often implemented through Dependency Injection, where a container (such as Spring) creates objects and manages their lifecycle.

Example of dependency injection:

public class Service {
    private Repository repository;

    // Dependency injection via constructor
    public Service(Repository repository) {
        this.repository = repository;
    }

    public void doWork() {
        repository.save();
    }
}

Here, Service does not create the Repository itself but receives it from outside, which aligns with the IoC principle.