Pros and Cons

Hi, Chad and Tammer,

Wow, I looked this book up at Amazon.com, and it looks fabulous. Can the antipatterns described in your book also be used, in a general way, for structuring good code in other programming languages, as well, or just for Ruby? What are the pros and cons of using Ruby over other web programming languages?

Thank you.

Best,
Helana Neumann

Hi Helana, and thanks for the kind words

While the AntiPatterns are mostly Rails specific, there are a few that apply to web applications in general.

Also, I'm clearly biased, but I firmly believe that Ruby (mostly because of frameworks like Rails) is the the language for modern web applications.

I understand your bias for Ruby, which makes me ask the specific reason(s) why you prefer Ruby over other competing technologies?

I'm very much a pragmatist, and Ruby on Rails appeals to that part of my nature.

Rails does a great job of saying "yes, you could do this a thousand different ways, but this is the way we've seen to work the best. If you just follow our path, you'll be done much faster." Rails focuses on building a product, as opposed to spending time finding novel ways of architecting a system.

While a framework like Rails on another language is still a boon, the dynamic nature of Ruby compliments it nicely. I can accomplish in 10 highly readable lines of Ruby what it would have taken me 100 lines in most other languages. I'm a firm believer that code is a liability, so being able to get things done with such a small codebase is a huge win.

Certainly it will help you in any programming language. Studying new programming languages, books and tools help you improve your skills. You will find better ways to code, to find the right solution. Sometimes it's bad, like when you discover that your language doesn't have closures ...