[Python-Dev] Classes and Metaclasses in Smalltalk (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Thu, 03 May 2001 15:25:12 +1200 (NZST)

Gordon McMillan <gmcm@hypernet.com>:

I would like to see ... some discussion of the expected pragmatic benefits. (That's a different topic from subclassing types.)

Actually, it's not -- the two issues are connected.

Suppose we succeed in unifying types and classes. Then instead of classes being of type ClassType, they are now instances of ClassClass. So classes are also instances, or in other words, we have unified classes and instances.

So even if we don't go as far as adding Smalltalk-style class-methods-via-metaclasses, we still have to deal with the fact that some things will be both classes and instances.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+