Effective Ruby: 48 Specific Ways to Write Better Ruby (Effective Software Development Series)

Description

If you’re an experienced Ruby programmer, Effective Ruby will help you harness Ruby’s full power to write more robust, efficient, maintainable, and well-performing code. Drawing on nearly a decade of Ruby experience, Peter J. Jones brings together 48 Ruby best practices, expert tips, and shortcuts—all supported by realistic code examples. Jones offers practical advice for each major area of Ruby development, from modules to memory to metaprogramming. Throughout, he uncovers little-known idioms, quirks, pitfalls, and intricacies that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. Each item contains specific, actionable, clearly organized guidelines; careful advice; detailed technical arguments; and illuminating code examples. When multiple options exist, Jones shows you how to choose the one that will work best in your situation. Effective Ruby will help you systematically improve your code—not by blindly following rules, but by thoroughly understanding Ruby programming techniques. Key features of this concise guide include How to avoid pitfalls associated with Ruby’s sometimes surprising idiosyncrasies What you should know about inheritance hierarchies to successfully use Rails (and other large frameworks) How to use misunderstood methods to do amazingly useful things with collections Better ways to use exceptions to improve code reliability Powerful metaprogramming approaches (and techniques to avoid) Practical, efficient testing solutions, including MiniTest Unit and Spec Testing How to reliably manage RubyGem dependencies How to make the most of Ruby’s memory management and profiling tools How to improve code efficiency by understanding the Ruby interpreter’s internals Review: A mixed bag - I've been working with Ruby for more than a decade and I've recently decided to read more about Ruby and get more knowledge about the way the language works and this book seemed fit for this purpose, even if it is slightly dated and covers Ruby 1.9 up to Ruby 2.1. While there are some interesting bits of information, the author seems to have an issue with the way the language is designed, just like another reviewer noticed. One of the interesting things about Ruby is that it allows you to write concise object-oriented code, with a dash of functional programming and books like "Eloquent Ruby" or "The Ruby Way" try to explain the design choices, while "Effective Ruby" dismisses those choices and tries to shoehorn the language into something that the author enjoys more. Looking up Peter J. Jones, it seems like he moved towards other languages (e.g. Haskell) by the time this book was published, which is no surprise. I've been torn between two and three stars because I also have "Effective SQL" which uses nicer and slightly thinner paper. Inspecting the book, I noticed that my copy is "printed in Poland by desertcart Fulfillment" and I also assume there's a printing issue with the code, as all method definitions have a space between the method name and the parenthesis. However, I decided that two stars is a big harsh. Otherwise, if you have some money to spend and you want to improve your programming skills in Ruby, there are better books out there than this one, like "The Ruby Way" by Hal Fulton or "Polished Ruby Programming" by Jeremy Evans. Review: Good for Ruby - Practical tips to help you become a better programmer. Even better if you're using Ruby. :) IMO there is a real void when it comes to books on Ruby programming. ok, I understand the language. But how do I actually write good object-oriented programs using Ruby? This book answers some of those questions. Well worth the cost and the effort to read it. It will stay on my shelf at home as a welcome reference rather than my shelves at work where just anyone could walk off with it. They will just have to buy their own copy.