Metaclasses vs. standard Python reflection?

[Jacek Generowicz]

"Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de)" <ckea25d02 at sneakemail.com> writes:

> Hung Jung Lu wrote:
> > Three operations are: (a) insert a before-hook when calling
> > a function, (b) replace/overriding a function itself, (c) insert a
> > after-hook when calling a function. The rest is all buzz words and
> > syntactic sugar coating.
> 
> This sounds reminiscent of the Flavours system in Franz
> Lisp. As well as overriding a method outright, a subclass
> could also provide what were called a "before daemon"
> and/or "after daemon".

... which nowadays continues its existence is the form of "before",
"after" (and "around") methods in the standard method combination in
the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS).

Incidentally, the followoing might make interesting reading in the
current context:

  http://prog.vub.ac.be/~wdmeuter/PostJava/Costanza.pdf

> Maybe those guys had invented AOP all those years ago
> and didn't realise it?-)

I suspect it has more to do with markting strategy. (Hint: look at the
author list of a book called _The Art of the Metaobject Protocol_)