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Comment by languageserver | Hacker News Reader

> Ahh, so Ruby doesn't - and can't[1] - support constant folding.

it is because most "OOP" languages are not really "object" languages. Ruby is a "proper" everthing is an object language, which is why everyone loves it so much even if they do not think about it.

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Huh? Python is an everything-is-an-object language too. Supporting monkey-patching is a separate thing.

I didn't realize this. I thought things like int's were special. I just tried

  x = 5
  dir(x)

Output:

  ['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__bool__', ...

Some Python objects are open for modification, and some are closed. Closed objects don't support this sort of monkey-patching.

Integers, strings, and other class objects defined in C are closed for modification.

  >>> x = 5
  >>> x.__add__ = lambda x, y: x*y
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  AttributeError: 'int' object attribute '__add__' is read-only

In that sense they are "special" (or class objects defined in Python are special).

But that doesn't make a language with closed classes non-OO.

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