The Art of Rails®

Chapter 9. Mixins and Monkey Patching

The five left the pub after Jen and her friends had spent a long time explaining the details of the terrible conflict that was unfolding. Web had listened calmly—he wasn't sure what to be other than calm—but he was in a state of disbelief at what he was hearing. The whispers, the conspiracies, the web sites visited by crazy radicals! It was true!

The sun had long gone down, and the streets outside were empty echoes of the hordes that had filled them hours before. Web's companions were businesslike, determined. The five were to go to the resistance headquarters that had been set up in the Big City. Now that Web had been found, he would be kept safe.

"I understand the facts of what you are telling me, I just don't understand why. Why? How does anyone benefit from an attack? The compilers must know this," Web said almost to himself, breaking the silence as the five walked down the deserted city street.

"Change, Web," Jen said. "Change and manipulation."

Rusty continued for her. "Compilers just weren't written to be dynamic. They accept the world as their designers envisioned it. Nothing else makes sense to them. Nothing else can make sense to them. They don't hate the Web because it is competing with them; they are scared of it because they can't understand it."

"And that doesn't make them bad," Jen cut in. "They do what they were designed to do—much better than we ever could—but their role is a simpler one. They are meant to follow the orders they ...