Most readers are already familiar with the concepts of
object-oriented programming: inheritance, encapsulation,
polymorphism. But the -creation- of objects of a given
class, with certain parents, is usually thought of as a "just
so" operation. It turns out that a number of new programming
constructs become either easier, or possible at all, when you
can customize the process of object creation. Metaclasses
enable certain types of "aspect oriented programming," e.g.
allow you to enhance classes with features like tracing
capabilities, object persistence, exception logging, and
more.
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