Agreed on all points. One of the main metrics I use to assess maintainability of code is 'how many places do I need to edit to make a change?' (within the same

Agreed on all points. One of the main metrics I use to assess maintainability of code is 'how many places do I need to edit to make a change?' (within the same file or worse, in other files too), 'how easy is it to find those places?' and 'how easy is it to make a change in one of those places but overlook another needed one?' On pretty much all of those counts, a single switch statement will tend to beat an inheritance hierarchy.