[larksimian]

I'll add that Ruby meta-programming has 2 pseudo-phases(at least in my mind): load time and 'true' run time. They're both technically run time, but smth like a has_many method in rails ActiveRecors runs once when the code is loaded, defines some other methods and doesn't run again while the process is running, normally.

You could also be defining methods pretty much whenever, for instance in response to user input, mutating the state of the process from that call onwards.

The former is much, much more common than the latter.

e. A blurring of the 2 is something like ActiveRecord defining field accessors dynamically once a DB connection is eatablished. You connect to the db and now your User model has email, first_name etc methods, unless you'd defined them already.

I'm guessing nothing quite like this could exist for Ecto(I vaguely know this isn't a super good comparison, Ecto is quite different from AR from what I remember).

That being said even that would still happen as part of a prod app's 'loading' phase so to speak rathet than during a request cycle.

[josevalim]

Another difference between the two comes from Ruby having open classes, so there is no callback that says "no further changes will be made to this class". This means you need to postpone some meta-programming to certain events, like Rails telling the app has done initializing, or until something is invoked for the first time.

So you are right there are distinct phases but they are established by convention and practices. And sometimes it is different between dev and prod (lazy loading vs eager loading). Or at least it was back then. :)

> I'm guessing nothing quite like this could exist for Ecto

Correct. :)