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Heh. Oddly, the solution to convoluted monkeypatching might be monkeypatching itself. Any reason why you couldn't extend the Object class to have this self-knowledge? Or couldn't a library be required at program start that works like Perl's 'use strict;', keeping you on the straight and narrow and not falling into the tempting trap of extending classes when you shouldn't be?

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the solution to convoluted monkeypatching might be monkeypatching itself

Yes, the very same thought occurred to me. Set a monkey to catch a monkey!

I didn't suggest it myself, because I've been away from Ruby just long enough that I didn't remember whether one could accomplish this in pure Ruby, or if one would have to ascend up a level and do it in the interpreter.

yeah, it's possible in pure ruby. You can do stuff to prevent monkey patching, as well as do stuff to make it easier for future monkey patchers. I prefer libraries to not do either, to make code easier to use.

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