Metaprogramming sounds like a very fancy word, but is it any good? It can be useful, but many people don’t realize that using metaprogramming has some costs. Just so we are on the same page… What is metaprogramming exactly? I define metaprogramming as using any method that: Alters the structure of your code (like define_method) … Read more
You may have heard (or even said yourself) that Rails / Ruby has too much magic… But where does that idea come from? What is Rails magic exactly? And what can you do to dispel that magic? Here’s what I think: When something feels like magic it’s because there is something you don’t know, there … Read more
What is a Struct in Ruby? A struct is a built-in Ruby class, it’s used to create new classes which produce value objects. A value object is used to store related attributes together. Here’s an example: A Point with two coordinates (x & y). You can represent this data in many different ways. Like: An … Read more
This is the next installment in the “Practical Computer Science” series, where you will learn how to apply classic computer science concepts to solve real problems using Ruby. Today we are going to talk about Graph Theory. You may have heard about binary trees, they look like this: The thing is that a binary tree … Read more
Are you looking for an object that behaves like an IO object (files, sockets, etc), but that you can control like a string? Then StringIO is for you. Let me show you some examples & things to watch out for! Basic Examples To create a StringIO object you can do this: io = StringIO.new(“abc”) Then … Read more