Steve Steve Downey wrote: > Clazz, or whatever, should provide MetaClass facilities. That is, it should be > for creating, manipulating, etc Class instances. And, in java, an instance of > java.lang.Class is a class. So j.l.Class is a type of MetaClass.
Technically a MetaClass is a Class. But semantically a class whose instances are classes is a MetaClass. So it might help to distinguish both by using the prefix Meta (as in Smalltalk80) or some other naming scheme. > But that shouldn't open the door for naming everything else Meta. > > A property that applies to an instance of Clazz isn't a meta property, it's a > class property. Same objection as above. > These are frequently called attributes, to distinguish them >from properties, which apply to, and vary with, instances. If we use > Attribute as the name of class properties, we need something to use for > Property, in order not to conflict with ... nothing. There isn't a class > j.l.Property. So Property is a decent name for describing object, as opposed > to class, properties. > > Field, on the other hand, usually means an actual slot in the object. A field > is never implemented virtually, the way a property might be. So Complex might > have fields real and imaginary, but properties real, imaginary, radius and > theta. [With radius and theta being read only. Don't make properties have > side-effects] This difference between Fields and Properties never became clear to me before. I think this is an important difference, which should be reflected in the API. So a property might have a Field but does not need to, so perhaps "hasField()" or simply offer getField(). [SNIP] I do think Stephen (Colebourne) is right that it might be better to start prototyping and to see if the names fit. Victor -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
