From: Paul McMahon <pm@...>
Date: 2008-06-12T09:44:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Class (not instance) Initializer

> I expected that prefixing the method with self would work. It doesn't.
> 
>   ...
>   self.populate_some_data
> 
>   def self.populate_some_data
>   end
>   ...

Your issue here is that code within a class is executed a line at a
time, so populate_some_data is called before it is defined.  Also, you
don't need to use self when calling populate_some_data, as the method is
already called within the scope of the class (though this is just a
style issue).  So the following code will work:

...
def self.populate_some_data
end
populate_some_data
...