Polished Ruby Programming: Build better software with more intuitive, maintainable, scalable, and high-performance Ruby code

Jeremy Evans

Jul 2021 · Packt Publishing Ltd

About this ebook

Elevate your Ruby skills to an advanced level by deepening your understanding of the design principles, best practices, and trade-offs involved in implementation approaches to future-proof your Ruby applications Key Features

• Learn Ruby web application design principles and strategies for databases, security, and testing from a Ruby committer
• Understand the design principles behind polished Ruby code and trade-offs between implementation approaches
• Use metaprogramming and DSLs to reduce the amount of code needed without decreasing maintainability

Book DescriptionAnyone 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.What you will learn

• Use Ruby s core classes and design custom classes effectively
• Explore the principles behind variable usage and method argument choice
• Implement advanced error handling approaches such as exponential backoff
• Design extensible libraries and plugin systems in Ruby
• Use metaprogramming and DSLs to avoid code redundancy
• Implement different approaches to testing and understand their trade-offs
• Discover design patterns, refactoring, and optimization with Ruby
• Explore database design principles and advanced web app security

Who this book is for

This book is for Ruby programmers who are comfortable in coding with Ruby but want to advance their skills by mastering the deeper principles and best practices behind writing maintainable, scalable, optimized, and well-structured Ruby code. This book won’t teach you the basics of Ruby – you’ll need intermediate knowledge and practical experience before you can dive in.

About the author

Jeremy Evans is a Ruby committer who focuses on fixing bugs in Ruby, as well as improving the implementation of Ruby. He is the maintainer of many popular Ruby libraries, including the fastest web framework (Roda) and fastest database library (Sequel). His libraries are known not just for their performance, but also for their code quality, understandability, documentation, and how quickly any bugs found are fixed. For his contributions to Ruby and the Ruby community, he has received multiple awards, such as receiving the prestigious RubyPrize in 2020 and being chosen as a Ruby Hero in 2015. He has given presentations at over 20 Ruby conferences. In addition to working on Ruby, he is also a committer for the OpenBSD operating system.