rubyx/lib/parfait

A thin layer

Here we have a placeholder for things i am currently developing.

Basically Parfait is the smallest amount of code needed to make a ruby-like OO system work.

A work in progress that started from here : http://salama.github.io/2014/06/10/more-clarity.html went on here http://salama.github.io/2014/07/05/layers-vs-passes.html

And i finally came to the conclusion that Parfait is the ruby runtime. Aha

Run - time

not compile - time

always mixing those up: As such it is not loaded at compile time.

A step back: the code (program) we compile runs at run - time. And so does parfait. So all we have to do is compile it with the program.

And thus parfait can be used at run-time.

It's too simple: just slips off the mind like a fish into water.

Example: Message send

I felt a little stupid that it took me so long to notice that sending a message is very closely relateed to the existing ruby method Object.send

Off course object.send takes symbol and the arguments and has the receiver, so all the elements of our Messaage are there. And the process that Object.send needs to do is exactly that: send that message, ie find the correct method according to the old walk up the inheritance tree rules and dispatch it.

And as all this happens at runtime, "all" we have to do is code this logic. And since it is at runtime, we can do it in ruby (as i said, this get's compiled and run, just like the program).

But what about the infinite loop problem:

There was a little step left out: Off course the method gets compiled at compile-time and so we don't just blindly dispatch: we catch the simple cases that we know about: layout, type instance variables and compile time known functions. Part of those are some that we just don't allow to be overridden.

Also what in ruby is object.send is Message.send in salama, as it is the message we are sending and which defines all the data we need (not the object). The object receives, it does not send.