Can you explain what is meant by inversion of control in the context of software development?

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

In the context of Python development, this often manifests through the use of dependencies that are injected into objects from outside (Dependency Injection), rather than created by them independently. This enhances modularity, testability, and flexibility of the code.

Example: instead of the class creating an instance of a dependency itself, it receives it through a constructor or a method:

class Service:
    def do_something(self):
        print("Service is working")

class Client:
    def __init__(self, service):
        self.service = service

    def run(self):
        self.service.do_something()

service = Service()
client = Client(service)  # control of creating Service is delegated externally
client.run()

Here, the control of creating and passing dependencies is inverted — the Client class does not create the Service, but receives it from outside.