On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:14:12 -0000, Hal F.
[email protected]
wrote:
Ross B. wrote:
I know I’m new, but humour me if you will ?
Firstly, what’s wrong with ‘singleton’?[snippage]
It doesn’t really bother me. But there is some confusion with
the Singleton pattern, and with other similar usages.
Now I’ve spent some time with the lingo, I’m not especially bothered
either. But when I first started reading Ruby it was confusing enough to
make me think twice about learning ocaml instead. I see the confusion
with
Singleton, but to be honest it felt ‘right-ish’ to me nevertheless. I
was
searching around trying to find out what an Eigenclass was, and when I
found it described as ‘singleton class’ that set me on the right road.
It
doesn’t exactly fit, but it’s not a million miles away either.
I’m sure this is an ongoing debate, and I don’t want to tread on any
beliefs, but I just thought I’d offer a perspective from a fresh pair
of eyes. Is there a serious movement to replace ‘singleton’?Some people want to change it, I think. If it must be changed, I
would favor something like “singular class” (and I agree with your
assessment of “ad hoc”). Some have suggested “eigenclass” – and I
admit this is a cool-sounding word, reminding me of my math and physics
(and German) in college. But I can’t really advocate it seriously.
Eigenclass is definitely l337er Singular class could work I think,
for
the reason I mentioned above - it’s the idea that it applies to a single
instance. Metaclass also seems to fit, but again I think the meaning of
meta is being gradually relaxed by popular usage (much like ad-hoc I
guess, but the other way around).
Whatever happens I hope the powers that be bear in mind that Ruby is
becoming ever more widespread, so whatever ends up being chosen needs to
in some way lead the newbie to the idea of a class that applies to an
object (instance class? Seems like a contradiction in terms…)