Polished Ruby Programming: Build better software

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

Getting the Most out of Core Classes
Designing Useful Custom Classes
Proper Variable Usage
Methods and Their Arguments
Handling Errors
Formatting Code for Easy Reading
Designing Your Library
Designing For Extensibility
Metaprogramming and When to Use It
Designing Useful Domain-Specific Languages
Testing to Ensure Your Code Works
Handling Change
Using Common Design Patterns
Optimizing Your Library
The Database Is Key
Web Application Design Principles
Robust Web Application Security