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A full understanding of class methods requires you to understand the concept of metaclass and a bit of behind-the-scenes Smalltalk magic.
When a class is defined, Smalltalk defines a companion metaclass. Each class is an instance—the sole instance—of its metaclass. Metaclasses have no names.
Thus, the Food class is not only a direct subclass of the
Object class, but also the instance of an automatically generated
metaclass:
*--------------* | Object class | *--------------* | | subclass v *--------------* instance *-------------------------------* | Food class | <--------------- | Food class's metaclass | *--------------* *-------------------------------*