From: Denis Leclair <lists@...>
Date: 2012-08-19T04:13:15+09:00
Subject: Re: accessing protected or private methods from class methods

Christopher Dicely wrote in post #1072759:
> In a sense what you are asking for is self-contradictory in Ruby -- a
> class is
> an object (an instance of class Class), and its a different object than
> its own
> instances. So, when you take a method out of the public interface to
> hide it
> from "external" code, you are hiding it from class methods because they
> are
> external code as much as any other method that isn't part of the
> instance is.

I disagree that this is self-contradictory in Ruby. I understand that 
they've gone with the "a class is an object" model and that certainly 
brings a lot of nice characteristics to the language. But that, in and 
of itself, does not require that class methods be treated as "external 
code" from the perspective of the class object.

There is still a very strong association between the class method and 
the class object that it is bound to so there's no technical reason why 
the class method couldn't be given more access privileges than other 
non-associated code. It must have been a deliberate decision to set it 
up this way and I'm trying to get an appreciation for why that decision 
would have been made.

Then again, maybe there is a technical reason why those privileges 
couldn't be given and I'm just not seeing it.

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