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 that you probably don't need to optimize code

Programmers in general, and new programmers in particular, often have the idea that all code needs to be fast. Now, there are certainly some environments where super-fast code is a requirement. If you are designing high-frequency trading software, modeling complex astrodynamics or fluid mechanics, or programming in a real-time environment where code must execute in a given number of microseconds, you want to make sure your code is as fast as it can be.

However, if you are using Ruby, that's unlikely to be the case. For one, compared to many other programming languages, Ruby is slow. This isn't a complaint about Ruby. To be fair to Ruby, no language that is as dynamic, easy to use, and programmer-friendly as Ruby is as fast as Ruby. However, Ruby is not known for its performance, at least not in a positive light. If you are using Ruby, it is likely in an environment where the flexibility and ease of use of...