From: "ara.t.howard" <ara.t.howard@...>
Date: 2007-09-11T02:46:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Singleton Modules rather than Singleton Classes


On Sep 1, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Logan Capaldo wrote:

>
> Counter proposal: remove singleton classes all together in favor of
> simply having singleton methods. The useful facility of a singleton
> class is that it allows you to have per-object methods (singleton
> methods). Class and module are both misnomers for the "thing that acts
> as a place to store singleton methods." By eliminating the visibility
> of this implementation detail, it allows for other implementations to
> be experimented with. The more you pin down how singleton methods are
> implemented, and the more you start doing things with details of that
> implementation the hard it becomes to have flexibility in that
> implementation. This also removes the need to justify referring to
> them as classes, and the false expectations this creates. My 2cents..

i think i've done as much meta-programming as anyone out there and i  
would not like to see that chance.  the reason is that the  
singleton_class is also a nice place to store *state* - not only  
methods - when doing deep ruby magic.  otherwise the whole affair of  
transforming singleton classes into modules seems reasonable but  
superfluous to me: it's just so easy to do

module M; def x() 'x' end; end

class A; extend M; end

class B; extend M; end

B.x #=> 'x'

that is hardly seems worth all the c coding and inevitable bugs even  
though the idea seems sounds.  maybe 2.0?

2cts.


a @ http://drawohara.com/
--
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being  
better. simply reflect on that.
h.h. the 14th dalai lama