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0 pointse12e10y ago0 comments

Eigenclasse, had to look that up:

"A hidden class associated with each specific instance of another class." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eigenclass#English

https://gist.github.com/jfarmer/2625060

Yep. Makes perfect sense that if everything is an object, and class methods belong to a class, and a that class method has to be attached to an object -- you'd need an object to attach it to...

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vidarh10y ago

And in Ruby they are only "special" because they have been intentionally hidden from the publicly visible inheritance chain. Personally I think that's what makes it hardest for people to grasp.

E.g. if you define class methods on class Foo, all that's happening is that the class of the object defining Foo is no longer an instance of Class but of a subclass of Class. But it gets confusing because Foo.class still returns Class.

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