Ruby is Awesome

This is a talk I gave at as a Thursday Tech Talk at Twilio as an Intern. It is a high-level look at why I think Ruby is awesome and the cool things it can do. It also touches on why developers sometimes think it does magic and dispelling that magic by looking a bit at what is going on in the background.

Transcript

1. Ruby is Awesome (and so can you!)
2. About Me My name is Carlos Heavy Ruby/Rails Development for the past 2 years Managing 3 large Rails applications for CMU @cdpadron GitHub - carlosdp http://carlosdp.io
4. OrgTracker
5. BudgetTracker
6. Scotch
7. Goals - What is Ruby and Where did it come from? - What Ruby does well and what it doesn’t - Dispel the Magic (Metaprogramming)
8. WHAT IS RUBY
9. Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. It was also influenced by Eiffel and Lisp.[8] Ruby was first designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. Ruby supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object oriented and imperative. It also has a dynamic type system and automatic memory management; it is therefore similar in varying respects to Smalltalk, Python, Perl, Lisp, Dylan, and CLU. from Wikipedia
10. A lanugage made for DEVELOPERS
11. Rise of Ruby - Ruby 0.95 was released as an open-source language on Japanese newsgroups in December 21, 1995 - In 2005, 37 Signals released Ruby on Rails, a web framework extracted from their products made in pure ruby. Matsumoto has said, "I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python. That's why I decided to design my own language."
13. MRI - C
14. MRI - C JRuby - Java
15. MRI - C JRuby - Java Rubinius - Ruby (and C++)
16. MRI - C JRuby - Java Rubinius - Ruby (and C++) RubyMotion - Obj-C (iOS and OSX)
17. What it Does Well
18. What it Does Well - Web Applications (Rails, Sinatra) - APIs (Rails-API, Sinatra w/ RABL) - Mobile Applications (RubyMotion, various Middlewares) - Anything that needs to be made well and FAST
19. What I would never use it for
20. What I would never use it for - An application that had a good need for strong typing - A super-performant application - Anything traditionally done low-level (that you would need to write a bunch of C extensions for anyways)
21. Myth: Ruby can’t Scale - Largely rose from the fact that Ruby 1.8 only had green threads and no forking, very little concurrency support - Ruby 1.9 brought OS threads and forking (fibers)
22. WHY RUBY
24. 5.times do puts “Hello World” end
25. Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World 5.times do puts “Hello World” end
26. Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World 5.times do puts “Hello World” end “Ruby is Awesome”.reverse.upcase
27. Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World 5.times do puts “Hello World” end EMOSEWA SI YBUR “Ruby is Awesome”.reverse.upcase
28. Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World 5.times do puts “Hello World” end EMOSEWA SI YBUR “Ruby is Awesome”.reverse.upcase a..z.each do |letter| puts letter end
29. Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World Hello World 5.times do puts “Hello World” end EMOSEWA SI YBUR “Ruby is Awesome”.reverse.upcase a b c d ..... a..z.each do |letter| puts letter end
30. Ruby is
31. Ruby is EASY
33. Reputation for Great Documentation
34. Ruby is truly Object Oriented
36. 5.class Fixnum
37. “Hello”
38. “Hello”.class String
39. 5 + 5
40. 5 + 5 5.send(:+, 5)
41. Everything with value is an Object
42. bundle install bundle exec ruby .... # Gemfile source ‘http://rubygems.org’ gem ‘twilio-ruby’ Bundler = Best Dependency Management
45. Ruby - 426/79 Python - 278/78 PHP - 293/102
46. Ruby has
47. Ruby has COMMUNITY
50. template "redis.upstart.conf" do path "/etc/init/redis.conf" source "redis.upstart.conf.erb" owner "root" group "root" mode "0644" notifies :restart, resources(:service => "redis") end service "redis" do action [:enable, :start] end
51. template "redis.upstart.conf" do path "/etc/init/redis.conf" source "redis.upstart.conf.erb" owner "root" group "root" mode "0644" notifies :restart, resources(:service => "redis") end service "redis" do action [:enable, :start] end path “etc” #=> Method Not Found
52. // Define methods such as chmod in this class def template(path, &block) block.class #=> “Proc” block.call end
54. DSL
55. DSL Domain Specific Language
56. Assume we have added activerecord to our Gemfile, run bundle install, and added a database.yaml with MySQL connection credentials it “can save a record” do Call.create(to: “5555555555”, from: “6666666666”) Call.count.should eq(1) end it “can recall a record” do Call.create(to: “5555555555”, from: “6666666666”) call = Call.find_by_to(“5555555555”) call.from.should eq(“6666666666”) end Also notice RSpec’s DSL Easy to understand
58. # call.rb class Call < ActiveRecord::Base end
59. > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped # call.rb class Call < ActiveRecord::Base end
60. > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped # call.rb class Call < ActiveRecord::Base end > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped
61. > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped # call.rb class Call < ActiveRecord::Base end > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped > rspec . .. 2 Test run, 0 Failures, 0 Errors, 0 Skipped
63. self.class.name #=> “Call” self.class.name.downcase.pluralize #=> “calls” ... def method_missing(method, *args) if method =~ /find_by_\w+/ ... end end
64. self.define_method :to do @to end self.define_method :to= do ...
66. a = Class.new b = Class.new a.define_method :best do “a is the best letter” end a.best #=> “a is the best letter” b.best #=> Method Not Found
67. STOP IT RUBY !
68. Eigenclasses a a:eigenclass Class Class:eigenclass
69. Why is this USEFUL
71. JSON Response: SMS { "sid": "SM1f0e8ae6ade43cb3c0ce4525424e404f", "date_created": "Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:24 +0000", "date_updated": "Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:24 +0000", "date_sent": null, "account_sid": "AC228b97a5fe4138be081eaff3c44180f3", "to": "+15305431221", "from": "+15104564545", "body": "A Test Message", "status": "queued", "flags":["outbound"], "api_version": "2010-04-01", "price": null, "uri": "\/2010-04-01\/Accounts\/AC228ba7a5fe4238be081ea6f3c44186f3\/SMS\/Messages\/ SM1f0e8ae6ade43cb3c0ce4525424e404f.json" }
72. twilio-ruby gem
73. @client = Twilio::REST::Client.new(SID, TOKEN) sms = @client.account.sms.messages.list.first sms.to #=> “+16666666666” twilio-ruby gem
74. Add Origination Country { "sid": "SM1f0e8ae6ade43cb3c0ce4525424e404f", "date_created": "Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:24 +0000", "date_updated": "Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:24 +0000", "date_sent": null, "account_sid": "AC228b97a5fe4138be081eaff3c44180f3", "to": "+15305431221", "from": "+15104564545", "body": "A Test Message", "status": "queued", "flags":["outbound"], "api_version": "2010-04-01", "price": null, "uri": "\/2010-04-01\/Accounts\/AC228ba7a5fe4238be081ea6f3c44186f3\/SMS\/Messages\/ SM1f0e8ae6ade43cb3c0ce4525424e404f.json", “country”: “United States” }
75. twilio-ruby gem
76. @client = Twilio::REST::Client.new(SID, TOKEN) sms = @client.account.sms.messages.list.first sms.to #=> “+16666666666” sms.country #=> “United States” twilio-ruby gem
77. # instance_resource.rb def method_missing(method, *args) super if @updated set_up_properties_from(@client.get(@uri)) self.send method, *args end def set_up_properties_from(hash) eigenclass = class << self; self; end hash.each do |p,v| property = detwilify p unless ['client', 'updated'].include? property eigenclass.send :define_method, property.to_sym, &lambda {v} end end @updated = !hash.keys.empty? end twilio-ruby gem
78. Why use Ruby? Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
79. Why use Ruby? It’s Easy Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
80. Why use Ruby? It’s Easy It’s Built for you Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
81. Why use Ruby? It’s Easy It’s Built for you It’s Built for open-source Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
82. Why use Ruby? It’s Easy It’s Built for you It’s Built for open-source It Defines itself Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
83. Why use Ruby? It’s Easy It’s Built for you It’s Built for open-source It Defines itself It’s Fast (to develop with) Matz built it because he wanted something “easy”.
84. Thank You