[Newbies] Defining a class at runtime

Edgar J. De Cleene edgardec2001 at yahoo.com.ar
Fri Jul 20 10:48:58 UTC 2007




El 7/20/07 7:31 AM, "Bert Freudenberg" <bert at freudenbergs.de> escribió:

>>> ...and yes, of course, there is a runtime.
>> 
>> Well, you could say there is only runtime. Which makes the term
>> useless, as it implies some sort of opposite.
>> 
>> Then how would you refer to runtime? In any case, we can oppose it
>> to code-definition time. Nothing exciting may happen then, but it's
>> worth being able to talk about it.
> 
> There is no technical distinction. All you do when "defining code" is
> creating an instance and adding it to a dictionary in some object.
> That's no different from other activities you do at "runtime".
> 
> The instance might be an instance of a metaclass and the dictionary
> might be held in a global variable called Smalltalk. Or the instance
> could happen to be a CompiledMethod instance, and the dictionary
> would be the method dictionary of a class object. So what?
> 
> Sending messages, creating instances, storing them in fields of other
> objects, wouldn't you call that "runtime" if you insist on that term?
> 
> - Bert -

Maybe Louis only use systems on which you need edit, compile, link, and run
:)

Edgar




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