From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-05-17T13:18:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Metaclasses...

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 12:36:51PM +0900, Jim Weirich wrote:
> Try this.  Draw a diagram of the major players (Object, Class, etc.).
> Mark all the instance-of relationships with one color, and the
> inherits-from relationships with another color.  Study the diagram
> real hard.  Study it real hard.  When you are done, you probably won't
> understand it any better, but you will have a cool diagram to hang on
> your wall. :-)

LOL!!!

One way to think about it is:

   If:
     Foo is a Class that inherits from Bar
     foo is an instance of Foo
   Then:
     foo is a Foo (instance-of)
     A Foo is a Bar (inheritance)
     foo is a Bar (instance-of)

So if you have to put an article in front of your noun, you are probably
talking inheritance.  Without the article, it's probably instance-of.
You can pretty easily apply this to the Class/Object/etc. relationships,
but I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader.

Paul