From: "trans.  (T. Onoma)" <transami@...>
Date: 2004-12-31T00:09:17+09:00
Subject: Re: #send and private methods

It goes both ways, you need a solid foundation to build on, agreed, but you 
also need flexibility across the board. What separates private? Is it a 
road-block or a sign-post? What's a sign-post going to do? Well, it will 
_deter_. If that is a goal then perhaps a 'deter' directive is in order. On 
the otherhand, if there are things necessarily private, does it indicate a 
flaw in design? Is it rightful for Classes to have local namespace? 

Or you could just say screw it and just reduce them to what they are, a Scope. 
A Scope is just a callable container, a scope can be public, private, 
protected, or deterred (and passive vs. active, see aop). Any one up for a

  public class String
  end

  %String{This is a new string}

or,

  String("This is a new string")

or Classicaly,

  String.new("This is a new string")

I believe it is things like this that Rails is teaching, but David has better 
words... http://rubyonrails.org

T.

P.S.
Hmm... I wonder how fast Ruby method lookup would be if it was in a Database. 
Then I could access through a marginally distinct map of nomenclature.