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

Become an accomplished Ruby programmer by understanding the design principles, best practices, and trade-offs involved in implementation approaches to keep your Ruby applications maintainable in the long term

Key Features

• 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
• Learn Ruby web application design principles and strategies for databases, security, and testing

Book Description

Most successful Ruby applications become difficult to maintain over time as the codebase grows in size. Polished Ruby Programming provides you with recommendations and advice for designing Ruby programs that are easy to maintain in the long term.

This book takes you 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 learning fundamental Ruby programming principles, such as correctly using core classes, class and method design, variable usage, error handling, and code formatting. Moving on, you’ll learn 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 have gained the skills you need to design robust, high-performance, scalable, and maintainable Ruby applications.

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

If you already know how to program in Ruby and want to learn more about the principles and best practices behind writing maintainable, scalable, optimized, and well-structured Ruby code, then this Ruby book is for you. Intermediate to advanced-level working knowledge of the Ruby programming language is expected to get the most out of this book.

Table of Contents

1. Getting the Most out of Core Classes
2. Designing Useful Custom Classes
3. Proper Variable Usage
4. Methods and Their Arguments
5. Handling Errors
6. Formatting Code for Easy Reading
7. Designing Your Library
8. Designing For Extensibility
9. Metaprogramming and When to Use It
10. Designing Useful Domain-Specific Languages
11. Testing to Ensure Your Code Works
12. Handling Change
13. Using Common Design Patterns
14. Optimizing Your Library
15. The Database Is Key
16. Web Application Design Principles
17. Robust Web Application Security