From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2005-08-17T17:41:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Prototype-based / Ruby question

zimba.tm@gmail.com wrote:
> I just stumbled across this page[1] on RubyGarden. The writer tells
> that prototye-languages languages are great and that Ruby is not part
> of them.
>
> As I understand the definition, prototype based languages don't
> instanciate objects from a class, but rather clone an existing model
> object. Ruby's classes are objects.

But they are not cloned:

>> class Foo;end
=> nil
>> o=Foo.new
=> #<Foo:0x1018f918>
>> Foo.class == o.class
=> false
>> o.class == o.dup.class
=> true
>> o.class == o.clone.class
=> true

> So which is first, the Class or the Object ?

In fact it's a circular dependency.  The Ruby interpreter precreates
certain objects, among them Object, Class and Module.  From the
perspective of a Ruby program it doesn't matter which of them was first -
they are simply there as a connected graph of objects with a cycle. :-)

> It makes me think of a french sentence which says : From the chicken
> and the Egg, which was first ? (disregarding the theory of evolution)

The cat.

> [1]
> http://rubygarden.org/ruby/ruby?action=browse&id=PrototypeBasedRuby

Kind regards

    robert