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0 pointskragen6mo ago0 comments

Oh, thanks! I didn't know that about defgeneric.

How would you classify Ruby? You can reopen a class and add more methods to it at any time.

0 comments

Well, reopening the class is the idiomatic way to define a method after the class definition, but if I wanted to write Ruby the ML/Common Lisp way, I would use "Class.define_method" like so:

  String.define_method :yell do
    puts self.upcase
  end

  Numeric.define_method :yell do
    self.to_s.yell
  end

What I like most about Ruby is how close it gets to Lisp's flexibility of semantics (i.e. macros) without actually having macros. (Common Lisp is still my favorite language for larger projects though.)

kragenOP6mo ago

Hmm. I'll have to think about that.

I still feel like ML is very much the odd one out, here, because the individual pattern-matching clauses aren't values and can't be added later except by editing the "generic" function (and usually the definition of its argument type).

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0 comments

MarsIronPI6mo ago

Well, reopening the class is the idiomatic way to define a method after the class definition, but if I wanted to write Ruby the ML/Common Lisp way, I would use "Class.define_method" like so:

  String.define_method :yell do
    puts self.upcase
  end

  Numeric.define_method :yell do
    self.to_s.yell
  end

kragenOP6mo ago

Hmm. I'll have to think about that.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse