Hi, On Sep 8, 2005, at 7:42 PM, Kirby Urner wrote:
> > I'm thinking about how, in Ruby, class definitions are never closed, > meaning > you can add methods to a script in various locations. You don't > supersede > the old class def when you reopen it for more stuff. There's also > this idea > of defining a module full of methods and then binding those to a class > -- I > haven't really learned this fully yet. > > A good reason to extend a class at run-time, either by adding a new method or by redefining an existing one, is for customization by a knowledgeable end-user of an application (people like you and me are sometimes end-users of others'programs, aren't they?). This is for example the case for scientists (I work with biologists): they are not programmers, but they have sometimes enough programming experience for such adaptation. When methods are defined as small and modular, it's very convenient to be able edit them -- for instance to add a conditional, or to add a method that you are able to call from a GUI that opens access to the Python interpreter. [Another language that can extends a class at run-tim is XOtcl (www.xotcl.org), developped as an extension of MIT Otcl] Best, -- Catherine Letondal -- Institut Pasteur www.pasteur.fr/~letondal _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
