From: MikkelFJ <mikkelj-anti-spam@...1.dknet.dk>
Date: 2001-08-11T18:43:32+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19514] Re: the way class variables work


"David Alan Black" <dblack@candle.superlink.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.30.0108102207230.4103-100000@candle.superlink.net...
> > Let me try. The key is that classes are objects too, and they have their

Initially, this was also my thought.
....

> But creating a new class does create a new instance of class Class.

Yes, you have a point there.

> Also, can it really be good, from the point of view of code
> maintenance, for a child class to have the power to change its parent,
> and all of that parent's other children, including future ones?
> Doesn't that make things very unstable?

I would seem so.

On the other hand, I wasn't really surprised that your example behaved as it
did - whether it is illogical or not. And Ruby has a lot of dynamic power
that can be questioned from a maintainance point of view: You can't possible
know what an object is, because some obscure corner of the code could have
changed it.

Therefore, your argument might not imly that the design is wrong.

But maybe classes aren't really objects after all. They are metaobjects, and
inheritance has a different meaning, where the entire family is an object.
It does give me a headache to think about this conceptually, although the
actual use is intuitive.


Mikkel