From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: First Ada DO-178 Certification Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 22:53:04 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <633cea44-3246-2ce1-40c1-63c30cda960e@Strand_in_London.Gov.UK> <13a8fd6d-10a4-1884-0b30-fc3857ca360e@Strand_in_London.Gov.UK> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:53:04 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9416ba48f1adcfe2127401957dfa62bf"; logging-data="2560505"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/E6+x7T5KPhBgz0wxpaUwA" User-Agent: Pan/0.160 (Toresk; ) Cancel-Lock: sha1:91NAeGXJE6wXrchzkLzytxdRwDc= Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:66437 List-Id: On Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:36:26 +0200, Nioclásán Caileán de Ghlostéir wrote: > This book is dated 1987. > ... > I do not readily remember metaclasses in it. In 1987, I think the only language that used the term “metaclass” was Smalltalk, and that was just as a hack mechanism on which to hang what we now call “classmethods”. Python has metaclasses in a much more useful sense: being fully OO, every value that a variable can hold is an object. Since functions and classes are first-class objects, they, too, must be instances of some class(es). The class that a class is an instance of is called its “metaclass”.