From: David Garamond <lists@...6.isreserved.com>
Date: 2004-06-07T01:11:38+09:00
Subject: Re: How to ducktype a Hash?

David A. Black wrote:
> The behavior of Ruby objects (what messages they respond to, and how
> they respond) is bootstrapped *but not constrained* by their class.
> It is possible to put this fact in the category of "enough rope to
> shoot yourself in the foot" or whatever, and decide it's too powerful
> to take advantage of or take into account when designing a program.
> Personally, I see no reason to look at it that way; I like the idea of
> programming with, not in spite of, Ruby's design.  But in any case,
> whatever interpretation one puts on it, the behavior of Ruby objects
> is not constrained by their class.
> 
> OK, now that means that there is Something Other Than Its Class that
> characterizes and denotes the behavior of an object *more accurately*
> than the name of its class (or of any mixins) does.  I'm not
> extrapolating any philosophy of programming from this; I'm just
> pointing it out.

What other things characterizes an object behaviour other than its 
class? I know that Ruby allows us to change object e.g. with 
Object#extend or adding singleton methods, but aren't those implemented 
by creating an internal class?

-- 
dave