book

Effective Ruby: 48 Specific Ways to Write Better Ruby

by Peter Jones

September 2014

Intermediate to advanced

240 pages

7h 2m

English

Addison-Wesley Professional

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Ruby Implementations and VersionsA Note about StyleWhere to Get the Source Code
Item 1: Understand What Ruby Considers to Be TrueItem 2: Treat All Objects as If They Could Be nilItem 3: Avoid Ruby’s Cryptic PerlismsItem 4: Be Aware That Constants Are MutableItem 5: Pay Attention to Run-Time Warnings

Item 6: Know How Ruby Builds Inheritance HierarchiesItem 7: Be Aware of the Different Behaviors of superItem 8: Invoke super When Initializing SubclassesItem 9: Be Alert for Ruby’s Most Vexing ParseItem 10: Prefer Struct to Hash for Structured DataItem 11: Create Namespaces by Nesting Code in ModulesItem 12: Understand the Different Flavors of EqualityItem 13: Implement Comparison via “<=>” and the Comparable ModuleItem 14: Share Private State through Protected MethodsItem 15: Prefer Class Instance Variables to Class Variables
Item 16: Duplicate Collections Passed as Arguments before Mutating ThemItem 17: Use the Array Method to Convert nil and Scalar Objects into ArraysItem 18: Consider Set for Efficient Element Inclusion CheckingItem 19: Know How to Fold Collections with reduceItem 20: Consider Using a Default Hash ValueItem 21: Prefer Delegation to Inheriting from Collection Classes
Item 22: Prefer Custom Exceptions to Raising StringsItem 23: Rescue the Most Specific Exception PossibleItem 24: Manage Resources with Blocks and ensureItem 25: Exit ensure Clauses by Flowing Off the EndItem 26: Bound retry Attempts, Vary Their Frequency, and Keep an Audit TrailItem 27: Prefer throw to raise for Jumping Out of Scope
Item 28: Familiarize Yourself with Module and Class HooksItem 29: Invoke super from within Class HooksItem 30: Prefer define_method to method_missingItem 31: Know the Difference between the Variants of evalItem 32: Consider Alternatives to Monkey PatchingItem 33: Invoke Modified Methods with Alias ChainingItem 34: Consider Supporting Differences in Proc ArityItem 35: Think Carefully Before Using Module Prepending
Item 36: Familiarize Yourself with MiniTest Unit TestingItem 37: Familiarize Yourself with MiniTest Spec TestingItem 38: Simulate Determinism with Mock ObjectsItem 39: Strive for Effectively Tested Code
Item 40: Know How to Work with Ruby DocumentationItem 41: Be Aware of IRB’s Advanced FeaturesItem 42: Manage Gem Dependencies with BundlerItem 43: Specify an Upper Bound for Gem Dependencies
Item 44: Familiarize Yourself with Ruby’s Garbage CollectorItem 45: Create Resource Safety Nets with FinalizersItem 46: Be Aware of Ruby Profiling ToolsItem 47: Avoid Object Literals in LoopsItem 48: Consider Memoizing Expensive Computations

Content preview from Effective Ruby: 48 Specific Ways to Write Better Ruby

Foreword

When I was asked to do a technical review and write the foreword for a book on Ruby, I was skeptical. Several Ruby books already exist that run the gamut from beginner to advanced Ruby VM internals. I thought, “What could another Ruby book offer?” But I agreed to look over the text, and to my surprise a great and novel book about Ruby was laid out before my eyes. This book is quite unlike any other Ruby book, and in a couple hundred pages, I imagine anyone who reads this—novice or expert—will emerge a better Ruby programmer.

Ruby as a language has matured a lot in the past decade, when I got started with it. Early on, there was the hype phase, when Ruby was touted as the end-all and be-all of languages. Then emerged the proliferation ...