Lukas I'm not that against the idea proposed by alex. I think that knowing that a class is abstract is important to have and this is not because Smalltalk original language was weak that we could not define now a clear definition. I do not like the definition of RB people because I have class that are not abstract and that are not referenced because I just did not load the package that use them. Now if magritte needed to know that a class should show up in a UI then may be it should be called differently because an abstract class is clearly a class that we should/cannot instantiate. If you take ***any*** book on OOP this is a basic concept. Stef On Oct 28, 2009, at 8:52 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote:
What would be your isAbstract be useful for?
To know whether it is wise to instantiate a class or not
That would be a pure guess then. Presumably you will still have to look at the implementation, at the documentation, at its users or study the coding conventions of the project to know for sure what to do with the thing.
Lukas
-- Lukas Renggli http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
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