From: Csaba Henk <csaba@..._for_avoiding_spam.org>
Date: 2005-01-26T23:20:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Self and Ruby Comparisons

On 2005-01-25, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even so, like I said, your approach does have merits, and is certainly
> a good way to give prototype-based OOP some play in Ruby. If your are
> interested I would enjoy developing a dedicated library together. We
> can work on it over at suby-ruby (keep in mind I can't devote too muh
> time on it at the moment, but I willl certainly be happy to help/get
> started.)

I neither have much time, but we could try.

But before writing a word of ruby, a plan should be made and goals
should be made clear.

Three different things to achieve:

1) Extend ruby's OO kit with prototype-like techniques.
2) Create a class Prototype within which you can play full
prototype-based OO.
3) If 2) is done, create "bridges" between conventional ruby world and
prototype-based (eg., extend Object with a method which creates a Prototype 
proxy)

Also it would be useful to get some insight where this stuff could be
used. Do you have any idea?

(Personal opinion:

 prototype-based oo [poo] is most useful where object initialization
doesn't require some special resource. (Poo advocates insist on the
intuitiveness of poo, but for me its quite contraintuitive to clone a
File object; or, if there is a special constructor for the given type
because of this, it's also contraintuitive that any instance of that
type can give rise to a new copy where the only thing shared with the
parent and the children is the type. If there is a special object
bearing the constructor method that's so close to being a class that I
don't see the point in poo for this type.) Parsers might be a good
example. There the class is really such an abstraction which has no
use.)

You should give me a sketch what kind of object model do you think of
and what capabilities should the citizens of poo country have.

As a recent post pointed out, there is no module method like "uninclude"
(I always tought there is one). That's pretty sad, it weakens ruby's oo.
Is there a reason for being so, or just there was no reason to make one?

Csaba