From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2007-11-13T23:43:11+09:00
Subject: Re: method names in 1.9

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 09:40:22PM +0900, David A. Black wrote:
> >call and send seem to be words from different OO languages for the same
> >thing.
> 
> They're actually very different. You send the message "call" to
> executable objects (lambdas and methods), whereas you send the message
> "send" as a kind of envelope around messages you can't send using the
> dot notation, for one reason or another.

I think you're confusing the issue by appealing to details in Ruby's
implementation.  If I write:

  obj.foo()

would you say that I'm calling method "foo" with "obj" as the receiver?
Or would you say that I'm sending the message "foo" to "obj"?

We tend to use the former in Ruby, but as I understand, Smalltalk users
would tend to use the latter.

Paul