Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

By : Jeremy Evans
Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

By: Jeremy Evans

Overview of this book

Anyone striving to become an expert Ruby programmer needs to be able to write maintainable applications. Polished Ruby Programming will help you get better at designing scalable and robust Ruby programs, so that no matter how big the codebase grows, maintaining it will be a breeze. This book takes you on a journey through implementation approaches for many common programming situations, the trade-offs inherent in each approach, and why you may choose to use different approaches in different situations. You'll start by refreshing Ruby fundamentals, such as correctly using core classes, class and method design, variable usage, error handling, and code formatting. Then you'll move on to higher-level programming principles, such as library design, use of metaprogramming and domain-specific languages, and refactoring. Finally, you'll learn principles specific to web application development, such as how to choose a database and web framework, and how to use advanced security features. By the end of this Ruby programming book, you’ll be a well rounded web developer with a deep understanding of Ruby. While most code examples and principles discussed in the book apply to all Ruby versions, some examples and principles are specific to Ruby 3.0, the latest release at the time of publication.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Fundamental Ruby Programming Principles
8
Section 2: Ruby Library Programming Principles
17
Section 3: Ruby Web Programming Principles

Understanding why testing is so critical in Ruby

Testing is critical to ensure proper behavior in every programming language, but it is especially critical in Ruby. In many other programming languages, the programming language has a type system that will catch errors related to improper use of types when the program is compiled, before the program is run. Ruby uses a dynamic type system, so it will not catch many errors related to the improper use of data types. Ruby programs are also generally not compiled until you try to run them, so even simple syntax errors will not be caught unless you try to load the related code. Combined, these two qualities make testing in Ruby more critical than in many other programming languages.

When talking about testing, the lack of type checking is often considered a missing feature. However, one of the best things about Ruby is that it doesn't require you to specify types for variables and methods. Unlike most languages, Ruby doesn't...