From: Pat Maddox <pergesu@...>
Date: 2006-05-14T19:52:08+09:00
Subject: Re: "Seeing Metaclasses Clearly"

On 5/14/06, Ross Bamford <rossrt@roscopeco.co.uk> wrote:
> I.e. you're making an instance method named for the argument passed into
> the class-level 'company'. ruby is pretty relaxed about that, but
> obviously it can't be called without using send.

Well that was kind of a stupid mistake on my part.

> Switching to 'define_method(:company) { name }' made it work as (I
> think) _why intended.

Actually, it doesn't.  Your code lets me do
HappyTruck.new.company

but why's code doesn't.  His code does
HappyTruck.company

Which struck me as kind of useless, to be honest.  If you're going to
make it a class-level method, why do all the metaclass stuff?  What's
wrong with:

class HappyTruck < MailTruck
  def self.company; "Happy Truck Company"; end
end

That is a much more direct way to achieve the same result, at least as
far as I can tell.  Okay actually even if I did it your way it seems
like it would make a lot more sense to just do

class HappyTruck < MailTruck
  def company; "Happy Truck Company"; end
end

I'm REALLY not understanding this stuff now :\

Pat