[REBOL] Re: Dumb newbie Rebol question
From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 4-Sep-2003 22:20
Hi Brian, (or do you prefer Parki?)
BP> Wow - help on this list is great.
Yes, it is. Part of why I love REBOL is the people it attracts.
BP> 1. Data encapsulation - is there any convenient way to make data
BP> readonly in an object? I need to define some constants, and I want to
BP> put them in an object so as to not clutter up the namespace.
Not really. I had the same issue when I started with REBOL, but I
haven't missed them (constants) for a long time. One thing that helped
me was when I tried to emulate ENUM functionality in REBOL ("How could
they leave that out?!" :). At some point in the process, I realized
that I didn't really need the numeric values for anything; what I
wanted were the human-friendly words that were unique in a list. From
there it was a short jump to just using a block of words and using the
literal words themselves.
Another thing that I think has helped me is keeping things small and
using objects to prevent "accidents". Rather than blindly including
every API constant listed in a Windows header file (as I would do
under VB), I include only those I need, maybe putting the others in as
comments.
I had a hard time getting out of my strong OO mindset and into a more
build just what you need right now
kind of mentality, and I still
have issues to sort out myself, but it *can* work. :)
Maybe if you show us exactly what you're wanting to do, we can make
some suggestions. That's another thing about REBOL, you can often come
up with a great *specific* solution that is not easily generalizable.
BP> 2. Any way to enforce some sort of Singleton idiom? I suspect that
BP> asking this (and perhaps the above) are caused by not enough
BP> indoctrination to the Rebol way of doing things, but wondering... I am
BP> going to put the serial connection code into an object (again, keep
BP> namespaces clean) and in Java, I'd make this a Singleton, as I only
BP> want one serial connection open. Not sure how this should be tackled in
BP> Rebol.
Same kind of deal. There's no mechanism to enforce it, but you just
create "the one" and use that. Maybe you end up with an outer object
that contains your serial singleton object, so he's the one
responsible for not creating more than one of them. Again, looking at
the specific case will sometimes lead to ideas about an architecture.
Lexical scoping is another tool you can put to good use in REBOL.
BP> Hot dang - this is a fun language!
I couldn't agree more! :)
-- Gregg
