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1
MAR
2012The Right Ruby Mix
Ruby is a melting pot language. It borrows ideas from many things that came before. It combines several different programming philosophies.
This aspect of the language can be a plus. It means that Ruby is suited to multiple applications. It also opens up some pragmatic shortcuts. Even better, it sometimes encourages us to think about problems using a different lens of thought.
Of course, this cuts both ways. Ruby living at the intersection of many ideas does have some downsides. First, there's more to learn than you find with some simpler languages. There's a cost for the extra knowledge we have to track. Even worse though, in my opinion, is that it's sometimes hard to know exactly what Ruby's style really is.
Going Off Script
One culture Ruby borrowed heavily from is that of the so called "Scripting Languages." The main source of these features was Perl, in my opinion, but you can also find influences from Bash and other sources. I found this comforting since I came to Ruby from Perl, but the truth is that it bothers some people.
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11
JAN
2012Experimenting With DATA
In the last article, I talked about the importance of a culture that encourages experimentation. It's hard to fiddle with something and not gain a better understanding of how it works. That knowledge is valuable to us programmers. I mentioned though that the way Perl programmers experiment is not the same way us Rubyists do it. Let me show you some actual Ruby experimentation I've witnessed over the years…
Executing Your Email
Some of Ruby's features are fairly obscure. Even worse, some of us who use those obscure features try to bend them to even stranger purposes. This is one way Rubyists like to experiment. Ironically, the features I'm going to talk about in this article are inherited from Perl.
Ruby can literally use your email as an executable program. Assume I have the following saved in a file called
email.txt:Dear Nuby: I just thought you would like to know what the Hello World program looks like in Ruby. Here's the code: #!/usr/bin/env ruby -w puts "Hello world!" __END__ I hope the simplicity of that inspires you to learn more. May Ruby Be With You, Ruby Jedi -
1
NOV
2011The Wrong Tool for the Job
I want to start our exploration of how to think about Ruby programming with a miniseries called Breaking All of the Rules. As I'm sure you know, programmers have a lot of rules. You can barely speak to a programmer for a few minutes without them quoting some axiom. We have a huge collection of advice to hand out.
Fortunately, I'm not just a programmer. I'm also a tournament chess player. Getting good at chess has really helped my programming. That's because chess players also have a ton of rules.
Perhaps you've seen our books of opening chess moves? They are literally hundred of pages that just list the various moves that you can "start" a chess game with. I use the word start very loosely there because some combinations can go 20 moves into the game or more. Chess games generally only average about 60 moves, so the first third of what we do is often straight out of a book. In fact, while you are playing a chess opening, we say that you are "in book." That means you are following the rules.
