[Types-sig] MetaClasses (Non-ASCII art)

David Ascher da@skivs.ski.org
Wed, 2 Dec 1998 09:59:10 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)


On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Just van Rossum wrote:

> At 10:40 AM +0100 12/2/98, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> >It does... also looks a lot like what I posted to the egroups
> >list. I'll just repost it here for simplicity:
> 
> Thanks, that is an interesting approach, which actually looks a lot like
> the current class/type scheme... 

Both of you (MAL and JvR) present schemes in which the notion of class and
instance (and something else, call it metaclass) are reified.  This is in
contrast, I believe, to GvR's view, which allows unlimited 'levels of
metaness', aka turtledepth.

This may be a good thing, or not.  I'm not sure.  Smalltalk, I believe,
also has only three levels.  Does it make sense to have arbitrary
turtledepth?

--david