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

Learning different approaches to testing

There are many approaches to testing in Ruby. It's possible to use any of them or potentially all of them successfully on the same project, though most Ruby projects stick to a single approach.

One approach to testing is manual testing. This is where you just run the program or use the library, and make sure the results are as expected. It was common in older software for this to be the only method of testing. Applied vigorously enough, with strict checklists on everything in the system that had to be tested, manual testing can result in high-quality software. There were entire careers based not on writing software, but only manually testing software that was written by others.

While it is possible to be successful purely with manual testing, it is very labor-intensive to manually test code, compared to having a computer automatically test code. Back when programs were much simpler, programming took much longer, and software releases...