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  I don’t like the Ruby 1.9 hash syntax

There, I said it, I don’t like it. And I don’t know why you do either.I assume you like it anyway, everyone else I talk to seems to. My heart sank over and over again whilst I was at the recent RailsConf and saw respected rubyist after respected rubyist using the new Ruby 1.9 hash syntax in their presentations.I just don’t get it.But I’m not one to just moan. I plan to justify my feelings. Then maybe you can tell me why you do like it?My friend the hash rocketI like the hash rocket (not least because it’s a rocket) and I know it’s not going away. Howev...

7,739 0       RUBY FEATURE 1.9 HASH


  Learning Ruby and Ruby vs Lisp

The company I work for has a lot of legacy Ruby code, and as Ruby has become kind of a mainstream language, I decided to get a book about it and learn how it works. As my learning resource, I chose The Ruby Programming language by David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto as that receives great customer reviews, covers Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9 and is authoritative because the language creator is one of the authors. The book makes a good read in general. There are plenty of code examples, but not too much to obscure the prose. What I found first interesting, later annoyi...

6,467 1       OOP RUBY DIFFERENCE FEATURE FUNCTIONAL LISP


  Looking for a Job? Learn Ruby, Python and be a Team Player!

What makes a great software engineer and perhaps more importantly, what skills will most likely land you a sweet job?  Mixtent and KISSMetrics analyzed LinkedIn data and surveyed users on perceptions of candidate skill levels based on their profiles and purported skill sets.The key findings?Python engineers are perceived as better engineersEngineers with teamwork, dedication and a solid work ethic are perceived as better engineers.  Creativity and communication skills are less valued.Ruby engineers are viewed a good front-end, as well as back-end engineersHiring Managers â...

7,406 0       RUBY PYTHON SKILLS TEAMWORK JOB SEEKING


  Method chaining and lazy evaluation in Ruby

Method chaining has been all the rage lately and every database wrapper or aything else that’s uses queries seems to be doing it. But, how does it work? To figure that out, we’ll write a library that can chain method calls to build up a MongoDB query in this article. Let’s get started!Oh, and don’t worry if you haven’t used MongoDB before, I’m just using it as an example to query on. If you’re using this guide to build a querying library for something else, the MongoDB part should be easy to swap out.Let’s say we’re working with a...

3,087 0       RUBY IMPLEMENTATION METHOD CHAINING LAZY EVALUATION


  Don't Overload #nil?

There’s a popular post on Hacker News about writing confident code by, among other things, overloading Object#nil? and returning “null objects” instead of nil itself.DO NOT DO THIS.In Ruby, all objects (except nil itself) coerce to the boolean value true. Your object will be nil and true at the same time. Bad things will happen. Your coworkers will cry. Sad people from around the world will ask bewildering questions on your mailing list.Here’s what happens:1234567891011class NullObject def nil? true endendo = NullObject.newo.nil? #=>...

2,786 0       RUBY OBJECT #NIL OVERLOAD


  Java is not the new COBOL

If you Google “Java is the new COBOL” you’ll find a glut of articles proliferating this mantra. I don’t know its origins, however I’m inclined to think it’s mostly repeated (and believed) by the Ruby community. Ruby, from a developer’s perspective is a low-friction language. A developer can just sit down at a text editor and start banging out code without really thinking about such superflous things as types. Java on the other hand, well, you have to think a lot about types. Java is a statically typed language after all, and it makes the deve...

2,411 0       JAVA COMPARISON RUBY TYPE COBOL


  Ruby is beautiful (but I’m moving to Python)

The Ruby language is beautiful. And I think it deserves to break free from the Web. I think the future of Ruby is firmly stuck in Web development, though, so I’m going to invest in a new language for data analysis, at least for now. This is a look at the fantastic language I came to from Java and a look at a possible candidate. (Update: I’ve since written a followup.)Java to RubySix years ago, I added Ruby to my technical arsenal. I learned C++ and Java in high school, and I planned to use them for data analysis in college—mainly for research kung fu. But when I disco...

12,129 0       JAVA COMPARISON RUBY ADVANTAGE PYTHON RUBY VS PYTHON


  Rails and Web Development - Take the First Step

Getting started with web development isn’t easy. Looking back to when I started, the first few weeks were the toughest to stick with it. For someone who is new to text editors and the terminal – the installation process can be really overwhelming. I recently went through the process of helping some of my friends get set up with Ruby on Rails and after doing it a few times, I realized it would be helpful to write a post that others looking to get started could refer to.The following is not going to fully explain the steps (which at some point will be important to understand). Inst...

2,144 0       WEB DESIGN RAIL RUBY RUBY ON RAILS