Software Writer

Everything in Ruby is an object, including the class. When you create a new class, you are basically creating an instance of class Class. Ruby even allows you to override the new method on a class, allowing you to customize the creation of all objects.

class Person
  # person-specific code
end

When Ruby encounters the above code, it creates an instance of type Class. It then assigns this object to a global constant named Person.

When you call Person.new to create a new person, the #new method on the Class is called, by default. However, like everything in Ruby, you can override it.

class Class
  alias create new

  def new(*args)
    puts "Creating a new #{self.name}"
    create(*args)
  end
end

class Person; end

ak = Person.new

# Creating a new Person
# #<Person:0x00007fde9e869280>
puts ak

Knowing that classes are instances of Class allows you to dynamically create classes on the fly.

Person = Class.new do
  def greet
    "hello"
  end
end

ak = Person.new
puts ak.greet    # hello