On 7/13/06, Hal Fulton <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> dblack / wobblini.net wrote:
> >
> > I don't know whether it qualifies as "monkeypatching" (I always
> > thought that meant doing something sloppy and ill-advised, which I
> > hope I'm not :-) but see if this helps:
>
> Actually it was only last week that I first saw this term
> being used in the Ruby community. I wonder if it's too
> late to squash it?
>

I think the term "monkypatching" as applied to this context (the
ability to re-open existing classes in Ruby and define new methods (or
redefine/undefine/alias existing methods) began in a Pythonista blog
that was criticizing Ruby because this sort of thing is possible and
done fairly frequently.

Now it would appear that people are willing to wear this term 'as a badge'.

Did 'duck typing' have similar origins ;-)

Phil