On 18/12/2007, Chris Cunnington <cunnington at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> On 12/18/07 2:16 PM, "Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > Basically, what you are missing is the distinction between instances and
> > classes
>
> The map is not the terrain. The classes are just templates, but people from
> the C world think that this is what's real. The instances are what's real.
> The classes are not the objects. (The classes are objects but, frankly, who
> cares. Metaclasses are somebody else's problem.) The instances are the
> objects. In Smalltalk you are dealing with a visible world of classes, which
> is false. And the real world of instances, which you can only see through
> the windows of the Inspector and the Explorer. You need to learn to see into
> two worlds, and not rely on the one, the System Browser, staring you in the
> face. The problem is added to, because classes are written to be as general
> as possible for maximum reuse. While the instances are as specific as
> possible. Unique, in fact. The leap to the dynamicly bound, loose typing
> world is weirder than  you think... Not for nothing are we associated with
> Lisp.
>

I can't agree with you on this. Classes are just objects, instances of
own metaclass.
Any object (including classes) refers to it's class. And to learn what
object can do or can't, you may send #respondsTo: to any object in
system.

But, for classes, there is a special methods which can describe a
properties of it's instances, like:
-methods of instance
-it's variables
e.t.c.

In this way, you can explore many of instance properties without creating them.


> Chris
>
>


-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.