Rubyisms in Rails (Digital Short Cut)

Rubyisms is an examination of how the style of Ruby informs the design of Rails. In particular, it looks at a few specific examples of how Rails' internal code is implemented in Ruby to instruct about Ruby's design principles. The main goal is simply aesthetic appreciation. But, if you are a beginning programmer in Rails who is stymied in your understanding of Ruby–or an intermediate Rails developer still writing code that looks like Ruby-tinged PHP or Java–this Short Cut will hopefully impart enlightenment and inspiration about the Ruby way of programming. It also reveals how the revolutionary design of the Rails framework can only be built upon the beauty of Ruby.

Table of Contents

The Philosophy of Ruby

Objects, Classes, and Modules

Duck Typing

Symbols

Blocks

Metaprogramming

    Reflection

    Message Sending

    Method Missing

Domain-Specific Languages

Conclusion