MINASWAN

The Ruby community is great. Sure there is the occasional drama, this is a programmer’s community after all, and some are more passionate that others. But in the end Matz is nice, and so we are nice ; or at least we try hard to be inclusive and open-minded people, while enjoying the happiness Ruby brings to coding.

Not content with being one of the nicest rubyists around, Avdi Grimm is also a podcaster, publishing Ruby Tapas twice a week, and a great programmer, and I think I could go on, as he is undoubtedly very prolific. His book Confident Ruby had been gathering virtual dust in the pile of unread goods for too long, and I thought a short review was in order.

I have been writing code for a few years now, most of it in Ruby because it suits me, and makes our splendid clients happy. However, I know that with time and project deadlines closing in, code often suffers: no matter how dedicated and experienced you think you are, mistakes and code smells slowly creep in. Avdi’s book offers some help in identifying code smells, countless refactoring opportunities, and more generally to develop good practices so that your code can remain as confident as it ought to.

Structure

The book starts by comparing a program’s flow to that of a story, and how code writing shares some similarities with story writing. At the very least, structure and clarity will help your readers picture what you were trying to convey.

Generally speaking, a typical function would consist of three parts:

• gathering inputs,
• processing these inputs,
• and delivering output.

Hence, the book is neatly organized in three main sections, each addressing one of our three core operations. For each chapter, Avdi Grimm provides us with a collection of patterns that are easily identifiable, and will make our Ruby code healthier.

So no, you will not find here a hotpot of super advanced meta-programming recipes, but rather a clear and concise manual of excellent Ruby best-practices, with deep roots in the object oriented programming paradigm. To me it looks a lot like a cookbook, one that I will without a doubt come to consult many times in the future. I almost regret not having a paperback version, for the pleasure of cornering the pages.

Just go and read it already

In the end I really enjoyed reading Avdi’s advice, so if you are serious about programming in Ruby, I can only recommend this excellent book. It will help you write better code that makes you happier, which is what Ruby is all about.

And in accordance to the tradition, happy hacking!