Some Ruby

3/2/26

Its been a while since I’ve dipped my toes in any language that hasn’t been Python, JS, or SQL so the other day I decided to pick a new programming language and give it a try. I picked Ruby because I know that Rails is a very popular web framework and I’m a huge fan of the REWORK podcast which frequently has the creator of the framework as a guest (DHH).

Here’s a simple Person class in ruby:

class Person
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end

  def say_hi
    puts "Hello, #{@name}"
  end
end

if __FILE__ == $0
  me = Person.new('anthony')
  me.say_hi
  me.say_hi() # parentheses optional
  puts me.name # this will fail
end

A few things stood out to me after a few hours:

• Code blocks end with the end keyword which is taking some getting used to, BUT I do like how it looks, that extra word adds some visual closure that Python doesn’t provide.
• Parentheses are optional
• Methods can have ! and ? in them!! For example, there is an empty? method:

def mark_item_complete(name)
    to_change = @items.select { |item| item[:name] == name}
    if to_change.empty?
        raise ItemDoesntExist, "No item for #{name}"
    end
    to_change.each do |entry|
        # ":done" is a symbol in Ruby
        entry[:done] = true
    end
end

• One of my favorite methods I’ve come across is called partition, which will split an array into an array where a condition is true and an array where the condition is false:

items = ['Anthony', 'likes', 'keyboards']
removed, kept = items.partition { |item| item.length > 5}
puts removed # ['Anthony', 'keyboards']
puts kept # ['likes']

• Its duck typed and the respond_to? method is a popular way to prevent errors, for example:

class Dog
  def bark
    puts "Woof!"
  end
end

class Wolf
  def bark
    puts "WOOF"
  end
end

class Chicken
end

if __FILE__ == $0
  animals = [Dog.new, Wolf.new, Chicken.new, 1]
  animals.each do |animal|
    if animal.respond_to? 'bark'
      animal.bark
    else
      puts "...silence..."
    end
  end
end

I’ve got a repo with a basic CLI todo app here but my broader goal is to work up to Rails and deploy a basic todo app to get a feel for what that’s like.

Back to the mine (lol)!!!