From: Jos Backus <jos@...>
Date: 2007-03-15T14:51:47+09:00
Subject: Re: java guilt

    Hi David,

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 11:27:43AM +0900, David A. Black wrote:
[snip]
> As soon as someone figures out a way to make it work, all will be well
> :-)  Actually the libraries that allow block-scoped core changes have
> never been widely used, as far as I can tell.

Are you referring to libraries like `scope-in-state'? AfaIac, these don't do
what I want them to do, which is the ability to restrict changes made to some
class while executing code in some other class. This is probably expensive as
hell and non-trivial to implement. But it sure would be great to have as it
would make Ruby a "safer" language.

Imagine if you could add String#foo to be visible within class Bar only
without having to subclass String and use it inside of Bar instead of String
(arguably the cleanest way to make this work otherwise).

Cheers,
-- 
Jos Backus
jos at catnook.com