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2009/5/25 Mike Stephens <rubfor / recitel.net>

> Object Orientation is conceptually about a sea of objects interacting
> with each other. They are all however in one sea.
>
> Earlier in Computer Science, we had stepwise refinement, which was a
> tree-like view of application compartmentalisation. High level functions
> would be split into lower level consituents and so on.
>
> I was thinking to model that in Ruby you would like to be able to
> contain classes within other classes in a similar tree like format, and
> what a shame that Ruby doesn't let you do that.
>
> But of course it does. However people don't talk about it. Hal Fulton in
> his book The Ruby Way asks people to let him know if they can think of a
> good use for this feature.
>
> Do you ever use this? Can you see a reason why it doesn't seem to be
> favoured?



I use classes as namespaces quite a lot. Typically, I will nest a class
inside another if the inner class is used directly only by the outer class
and not by other parts of the system. It's not a hard-and-fast rule but I
find this to be a useful organisational feature.

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