What is the difference between IoC and dependency injection?

IoC (Inversion of Control) is a design principle where the flow of control of a program is inverted. Instead of components creating their dependencies themselves, their creation and management are handled by an external container.

Dependency Injection (DI) is a design pattern that is one way to implement the IoC principle. With DI, a component's dependencies are passed to it from outside, rather than being created within the component itself.

The difference between IoC and DI is as follows:

• IoC is a broader principle that describes the inversion of control.
• DI is a specific way to achieve this inversion of control.

DI is "how" to achieve IoC.

In other words, DI is a subset of IoC. IoC can be implemented in various ways, and DI is one of the most popular and effective methods.