From: Joost Diepenmaat <joost@...>
Date: 2008-08-20T07:01:33+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] JS.Class 2.0

James Coglan <jcoglan@googlemail.com> writes:

> [Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
>
> Hello list,
> Do please forgive me if this is a little too off-topic but I thought some
> folks here might be interested. I recently released version 2.0 of JS.Class,
> my JavaScript library that implements some of Ruby's OOP features in
> JavaScript. It is not a Ruby interpreter; rather it brings various idioms
> found in Ruby OO programs to JavaScript, allowing for classes, modules,
> inheritance, metaprogramming hooks, and ports of a few classes in the Ruby
> stdlib amongst other things.
>
> If there's anybody here who's into JavaScript I would be thrilled if they
> would give it a try and let me know about any weak spots where it might
> deviate from Ruby-like behaviour. This release is the closest to Ruby I've
> managed to get so far, and I'd love some help from the Ruby community to
> iron out any obscure use cases.
>
> Anyway, without further ado:
> http://jsclass.jcoglan.com/
>
> Any help/feedback very welcome indeed.

Ok, well, first impressions:

* It seems fairly large for what it appears to do. But I've not
  investigated this in depth.

* There's no in-line documentation, which is a pain if you're
  evaluating code.

* I'm quite certain using constructors as the basis for classes is
  just wrong in javascript. I don't have the time now to go into this
  in depth. I put some earlier explanations about constructors online
  here:

http://joost.zeekat.nl/constructors-considered-mildly-confusing.html

  At the moment I think that any code that's serious about building
  classes in JS should start from something similar to Crockford's
  "begetObject":

http://javascript.crockford.com/prototypal.html

  and forget about constructors all together.

* I'm not certain that you should even try not to "deviate from
  Ruby-like behaviour". You're not writing a ruby library, after all.


-- 
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/