a timocracy of one

Last year, I wrote an article about redefining an instance method from a module via alias_method. I understand better how extend/include work together now (and the ClassMethods include patterns and whatnot) so I am little embarrassed at my earlier confusion, but there is one concrete thing I wanted to add/simplify.

If you are mocking and don’t need to keep a reference to the old method, using define_method might be marginally cleaner.

def self.included(associator_class) 
  associator_class.send(:define_method, :initialize, instance_method(:initialize))
end

This is handier because you can skip the method definition/reference logic and just do it in situ, for instant-stubification

ClassToBeIntercepted.send :define_method, :method_to_be_nuked, proc {return 'nuked'}