From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2005-12-06T21:57:34+09:00
Subject: Re: injecting dynamic methods into a class


David A. Black wrote:
>
> This subject used to be approached in the spirit of making suggestions to
> Matz, to help him in the process of coming up with a good replacement term
> for "singleton class" if he decides to replace it.  For some reason it's
> turned into people not only coining terms but actually using them publicly
> as drop-in replacements, unremarked upon, for "singleton class."  The
> result is that, de facto, there's no term any more, when there used to be
> a perfectly serviceable term.  Instead there's a kind of smeared rainbow
> of terms, and a lot of meta-explanations about why there's a smeared
> rainbow instead of a term.
>
> It's regrettable that the thing singled out for this strange treatment is
> something that's often quite difficult for Ruby learners to understand
> anyway.  Having to learn not only the mechanics of singleton classes, but
> also a bunch of Ruby community lore about who uses what term, just so that
> one can understand what various people are saying, seems to me to be
> pretty tiresome.
>
> Oh well -- obviously the shipped has sailed on this.  I just hope that if
> Matz does make some kind of decision about it, people will actually pay
> attention to it.

Well, I think matz has never made a fird decision on it, and it seems
has prefered to let the ciommunity sort it out, as is evidence by the
fact the the source still referes to "virtual class", another perfectly
servicable term but one I think you yourself objected too b/c of it's
overlap with virtual classes in c.

T.