[ruby-talk:01248] Re: Singleton classes

From: Dave Thomas <[e-mail]>

> "Conrad Schneiker" <[e-mail]> writes:
>
> > From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]>
> > Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 9:55 AM
> >
> > > Hmm, I don't know which is better.  As non native English speaker, I
> > > have no idea about the nuance of the word `singleton'.
> >
> > I would guess that most English speakers (except for maybe card players)
> > have probably never heard of 'singleton' (but I don't watch enough TV to
be
> > sure :-). The only places I've encountered it with any frequency (long
ago)
> > was in connection with math set theory, and sometimes I think in
connection
> > with analysis of (data structure) algorithms.
>
> And of course the Singleton pattern from the GoF, which is probably
> most programmers biggest single exposure to the word (and one reason
> why it is somewhat confusing in the Ruby sense).

Good point.

However my wild guess is that, even so, "most programmers' " in this case is
probably still a minority of programmers overall (and maybe even a minority
of programmers using OO stuff in C++, Java, Perl, and Python as well).

Nevertheless, GoF might be a useful reference point for systematizing Ruby
nomenclature. (Know of any other works that ought to be considered?) I
noticed that the MRE book is mentioned in "1.10 Is there a Ruby book?" of
the FAQ. Perhaps GoF and 3 or 4 other books should be included there as
well.

(For the benefit of others who may not recognize the acronym, GoF == Gang of
Four, a bad (meaning 'good' in the context of a) pun used as an indirect
reference to the book "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented
Software", which has 4 authors.)

Conrad