Ruby Best Practices

Conclusions

Depending on what you were looking for, this chapter may have been a bit different from what you were expecting based on the title. However, what you will find is that the things we’ve discussed here will really take you far when it comes to improving the maintainability of your projects. Though far from glamorous, things like good documentation, well-organized folders and files, and a way to automate as much of the grunt work as possible does a whole lot for your projects.

Poorly maintained projects can be a huge drain on developer productivity and morale, yet nicely curated code can be downright enjoyable to work with, even if you’re brand-new to a project. The tools and techniques we’ve discussed so far aren’t going to make maintenance completely painless, but will still provide a solid foundation to work off of that will grow over time.

We’ve now reached the end of the last official chapter in this book. However, I hope that you will not stop here, as there are still three very useful appendixes left for your enjoyment. If you turn the page, you’ll notice that these aren’t simply tables of reference data for looking up, but instead, tightly packed bundles of bonus material that didn’t quite fit into the main flow of the book. There is still a ton of real code left to walk through in the book, so if you put it down now, you’d be short-changing yourself.

Whether you continue to read on or not, I hope you have enjoyed what you have read so far, and that you can put it ...