Public/private/protected instead of def

Ruby
1

First of all, I am curious. Is there any way to do the following but
still retain backward compatibility?

class Module
# unfortunately super doesn’t work
alias :publicize :public
alias :privatize :private
alias :protect :protected

def public(name, &code)
  define_method(name, &code) if code
  publicize(name)
end

def private(name, &code)
  define_method(name, &code) if code
  privatize(name)
end

def protected(name, &code)
  define_method(name, &code) if code
  protect(name)
end

end

Example

class X

public :x do |*a|
  p a
end

private :y do |*a|
  p a
end

protected :z do |*a|
  p a
end

end

Secondly, I guess ‘def’ was just nice because of it’s uniformity
throughout modules and classes, but I have to wonder if the more Java
like to use of public/private/protected might ultimately be a bit more
beneficial (especially if they could be generalized to allow the
definition of others via meta-programming). Classes might look more
like:

class X

public_accessor :a

private_reader :b

protected_writer :c

public x(*a)
  p a
end

private y(*a)
  p a
end

protected z(*a)
  p a
end

end

2

I should point out why this even crossed my mind. I have a piece of
code like so:

class C < Module
def initialize(&block)
instance_eval(&block)
end
end

Within it the normal public/private/protected do not work.

M = C.new do
private
define_method(:x){ “x” }
end

class X
include M
end

X.new.x #=> “x” (instead of an error)

So it occurred to to make public/private/protected helper methods in
this context, which led me to the larger thought.