<AaronSprague/>

Warning this my understanding as of today, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I often hear the terms Inversion of Control(IOC), Dependency Injection(DI) and the Strategy Pattern thrown around in the same context, this was getting really confusing for me. So, I spent a couple of hours trying to clarify the differences.

IOC vs DI: Basically DI is a type of IOC. IOC is a broad abstract principle that covers not only DI but Event-Driven programming and numerous others.

So What is DI? DI is the way you provide the implementation for a dependent service. There are a number of DI frameworks out there I have recently been playing with Ninject mostly because I like ninjas... and the flow syntax for wiring up the dependencies looks nice.

DI vs Strategy Pattern: For a while now I have been using the Strategy pattern thinking it was the same as DI. I know, "Gosh such an idiot :p", but DI assembles the appropriate algorithms for the calling class. Strategy is just one of the patterns that lends itself well to DI.

Dependency injection

Inversion of control

Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern by Martin Fowler

Inversion of Control vs Strategy Pattern

IoC containers are not about a design pattern

Thank you, Eric Ridgeway for answering my 200 questions.