From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-04-24T17:43:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby.shop

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Pine" <nemo@hellotree.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 12:10 AM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby.shop


> ----------------------------
> Perhaps the bottom line is that my red
> arrows are all backward?
> ----------------------------
>
> No.  Here's what I think about your arrows:
>
> First, change all blue arrows to red, since they basically mean the same
> thing (objects of class A get functionality from class/module B).
>
> Second, switch your IO --> File arrow to be File --> IO.  You just made a
> mistake there.
>
> Third, either get rid of the Object --> Class arrow (since, as you pointed
> out, Object does *not* inherit from Class), or change it to a blue line.
A
> blue line would mean "point to your class".  Every class (Object, Module,
> and even Class itself) should have a blue line pointing to Class, if you
> decide to include blue lines at all; likewise, every module would have a
> blue line pointing to Module.  This is the *only* line from Object to
Class.
> Why include it unless you are also including the blue line from Class to
> itself?  Or from Module to Class?
>
> I wouldn't suggest putting in the blue lines at all unless you are going
to
> include some non-class/module objects in the picture; otherwise, all of
your
> blue lines just point to Class or Module, and it creates a lot of clutter.
> But, if you wanted, you could have "hello" --> String and 5 --> Fixnum
(both
> blue lines, *exactly* like Object --> Class, and totally unlike Fixnum -->
> Integer).
>
> There's a lot of confusion about this, and there doesn't need to be.  If
you
> are going to include a line from Object to Class, *please* consider that
> that relationship is *no* different from Module --> Class, or File -->
> Class, or Class --> Class.  Why include one line and not the others?

Hmmmm. Well, I have always perceived some circularity
in Ruby's object model, and I guess I wanted to see
an explicit loop in the drawing.

I guess this perception can be said to stem from the fact
that classes are objects. If you came from C++ and Java,
as I did, you can see this would seem esoteric.

Apparently the loop in Matz's original drawing shows that
the circularity is not entirely in my head... but can I
omit the singleton classes and still depict that loop?


Hal