From: Dan Doel <djd15@...>
Date: 2003-08-16T12:56:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Overloading ()

Aredridel wrote:

> That's something I'd been wondering -- it came as a surprise to me that
>
>all methods aren't first-class objects.  Of course, I was used to
>needing to pass method handles around from all my time spent in PHP, and
>since using Ruby, haven't needed that even once.
>
>I think the biggest thing is that methods-as-objects, or lambdas as
>objects are a functional programming artifact, which doesn't mesh with
>OO very well at times.  I think this is one of those cases.
>
I suppose that depends what you mean.  Technically methods are first 
class in Ruby because you can
pass them around as objects.  Blocks are first class as well when 
converted to Proc objects, and they
serve the same functions as lambda constructs in functional languages.

I agree with what you're saying, though.  Methods don't exactly "feel" 
first class in Ruby, since you need
to call #method to get the object, and you can't use those objects 
interchangably with method calls.  It
works better this way within the context of Ruby, but it seems very 
different when comparing it to a
pure functional language like, say, Haskell.  It's somewhat unfortunate 
that it's difficult to get certain
very useful concepts to mesh together perfectly, but I suppose that's 
just the way things are.

- Dan