Question

I’m looking over some open-source code and can’t wrap my head around this snippet.

class Something
    def self.smart
       new.smart
    end

    def smart 
      "test"
    end
end

class Other < Something

println Other.smart

Is the code trying to instantiate a new instance every time smart is called?

Answer 1

def self.smart
       new.smart
end

is equivalent to static method, which can e accessed by using class name.

... static ... smart()

and

def smart 
      "test"
end

is equivalent to instance method, need object to access

... smart()

new is same as the in java, created an instance of class.

and the whole thing is equivalent to.

public static .... smart(){
   new ClassName().smart();
}