overriding

I would like to know what is the difference between overriding methods with prototypes and without prototypes. Consider: Example 1: function Animal() { this.sleep = function () { alert("animal sleeping"); }; this.eat = function () { alert("animal eating"); }; } function Dog() { this.eat = function () { alert("Dog eating"); }; } Dog.prototype = new Animal; var dog = new Dog; dog.eat(); Example 2: function Animal() { } function Dog() { } Animal.prototype.sleep = function () { alert("animal sleeping"); }; Animal.prototype.eat = function () { alert("animal eating"); }; Dog.prototype = new Animal;

I'm currently coming (back) up to speed with EJB and while I was away it changed drastically (so far for the better). However, I've come across a concept that I am struggling with and would like to understand better as it seems to be used in our (where I work, not me and all the voices in my head) code quite a bit. Here's the example I've found in a book. It's part of an example showing how to use the @EmbeddedId annotation: @Entity public class Employee implements java.io.Serializable { @EmbeddedId @AttributeOverrides({ @AttributeOverride(name="lastName", column=@Column(name="LAST_NAME"),

I want to use rails' familiar helpers, but with slightly altered functionality. The way I see it, I want to be able to do something like: module AwesomeHelper #... create alias of stylesheet_link_tag to old_stylesheet_link_tag def stylesheet_link_tag(*args) if @be_awesome awesome_stylesheet_link_tag *args else old_stylesheet_link_tag *args end end end The way I see it, I have three options: Monkey patching: Reopening the rails helper module. If the rails team ever change the name of their helper module, my code becomes a source of brittleness. Not insurmountable, but not ideal. Use different

Is anyone aware of a language feature or technique in C++ to prevent a child class from over riding a particular method in the parent class? class Base { public: bool someGuaranteedResult() { return true; } }; class Child : public Base { public: bool someGuaranteedResult() { return false; /* Haha I broke things! */ } }; Even though it's not virtual, this is still allowed (at least in the Metrowerks compiler I'm using), all you get is a compile time warning about hiding non-virtual inherited function X. A couple of ideas: Make your function private. Do not make your function virtual. This doesn