From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-11-10T22:45:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Making Instace Variables Private/Local

From: "William Djaja Tjokroaminata" <billtj@z.glue.umd.edu>


> Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@soyabean.com.au> wrote:
> > If C++ and Java allow derived classes to access parent's instance
variables,
> > then why not Ruby?  Granted, at least in these languages, instance
variables
> > can be made genuinely private, but I don't think it would make sense for
Ruby
> > to make *all* instance variables private.
>
> Hi Gavin,
>
> But remember, C++ and Java are *statically typed* languages.  I can just
> check the one and only one place of variable declarations and I know all
> the instance variables.  Not so with Ruby; it is fundamentally difficult
> to know whether I accidentaly overwrite someone else's variable with the
> same name; only bugs will reveal that... :)
>
> Bill

Good point.  For this general reason, I usually endeavour to enumerate my
instance variables somewhere near the top of the class definition.  Nothing
hard and fast - just something to remind me what I'm using, even if it's just
initialising then in the constructor.

Gavin