From: "Yohanes Santoso" <ysantoso-rubytalk / dessyku.is-a-geek.org>
> E S <eero.saynatkari / kolumbus.fi> writes:
> 
> >  Everything is an Object 
> 
> I have never liked this over-generalised slogan. Without qualifying
> it, then the sentence 'expression is an Object' would be true, yet
> that is not true.
> 
> It should be qualified as: every object is an Object. The word
> 'object' there has two senses. The first and obvious one is instances
> of Object or its descendants. The second meaning is data entity.

While, "Everything is an Object" may be an exxageration,
I think there's enough truth to it for it not to be a
meaningless statement.  In how many languages that 
claim to be OO are all data types, even integers, floats,
and strings, Objects?  And in how many are Classes themselves
first-class Objects?  In my admittedly limited experience,
(Perl, Python, C++, Objective C, Java, Smalltalk), just one
language.  Oh, and ruby.  Two languages.  :)

> > * Ruby is pure OO. 
> 
> I also have never liked this proclamation as everyone has their own
> definitions of what OO is. This proclamation is worth not much more
> than proclaiming the assembly language is 'pure OO'.

Clearly[1], a language is OO if Alan Kay says it is.  :)
Since ruby borrows significantly from Smalltalk's object
model, there's a good chance ruby is OO, too.  <grin>


[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HeInventedTheTerm



Happy Rubying,

Regards,

Bill