From: Dan Doel <djd15@...>
Date: 2003-11-13T12:50:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Duck Typing and Object Hashish

T. Onoma wrote:

>Thanks for trying bud! :)  But I understand duck types.
>  
>
Heh, sorry. I'm too used to questions about what it is appearing here, 
with me
writing long, rambling musings of my own in response. :)

In fact, your idea seems similar to the way people describe some aspects of
Python.  I'm not a Python expert, but I seem to recall that variable 
access is
seen more as a lookup than something uniquely part of objects. So 
essentially
an object is a hash, and instance variables are just space keyed to the 
appropriate
name.  Private variables are then made by mangling the name used to access
it by whatever method (facilitated in Python by adding _ or __ to the 
beginning
of the name).

Put that together with the fact that functions are first class in 
Python, and you
actually have a somewhat consistant object system.  It's just that, for 
convenience,
the code:

foo.bar(baz)

becomes:

foo["bar"](foo, baz)

Or something similar, because the latter is ugly.

In fact, with your hash-proc object model, Ruby becomes a lot more Python
like.  "Methods" become automatically first class, but they require a 
function
call syntax, so that you can't write

foo.bar

Because that's the method bar of foo, not the result of calling method 
bar of foo.
For the latter, you need:

foo.bar[]

which becomes:

foo[:bar][foo]

I don't really know where I'm going with this.  It's an interesting 
subject, though,
and can provide one with things to think about for many hours.

Cheers,

- Dan