From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-11-20T05:50:52+09:00
Subject: Re: "stereotyping" (was: Re: Strong Typing (Re: Managing metadata about attribute types) )

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 11:50 am, Chad Fowler wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Sean O'Dell wrote:
>
> #
> # A class is a declaration which says "I do this."
>
> This is the root of the misunderstanding.  A class is a convenient
> collection of behaviors that can be applied, like a template, to an
> object.  In Ruby, it's not a declaration.

It's not, but if you look at a class as one form of interface declaration, it 
can be.  If a class has String in its ancestry, I can expect an object of 
that type to contain all the methods that the String class implements.  So, 
you CAN think of an object that has String in its ancestry to declare "I 
implement the String interface."

	Sean O'Dell