Core Concepts
What follows are some of the conceptual foundations for what we are building. Understanding these concepts will be crucial for anyone participating at an immortal level. Only the philosophical or high-level architecture of each concept will be discussed here, so that we can engage a broader audience. Those interested in implementation-level details should familiarize themselves with these concepts first, and then browse the source or ask on the IrcChannel for implementation details.
- Oaths and Covenants - Core social constructs
- PeriodicObjects - An algorithm (based on the periodic table of elements) for charting the progress or quality of objects.
- ThePattern - A periodic algorithm for describing development or change
Some of the perhaps unusual programming constructs we're using which would be nice to know about for discussions of the above stuff:
- ComposedObjects - A mechanism for modelling complex derived balanced behaviour in an object class
- Metaclasses - A framework for creating a dynamic shareable class library
- Properties - A mechanism for adding behaviour and attributes to objects at runtime
- MethodHooks - A mechanism for modifying an object's behaviour without affecting the class from which it was instantiated
— Ged The Greys Hain - 18 May 2000
