RailsConf - Meta-programming Ruby

My tutorial this morning was on meta-programming Ruby.

The second half by Patrick Farley was about the implementation of Ruby and how it enables and affects meta-programming. With my interest in implementing programming languages this was right up my alley.

The first half, by Neal Ford, I didn't like as much. He spent some of his time bad mouthing other languages - easy prey but not very productive. I wasn't too impressed with some of his examples showing why Ruby is better - they didn't seem to be comparing apples to apples.

For example, he compared a Java static (class) for determining if a string is empty to the Ruby empty instance method. Because it's a static method the Java class has to check for null. The Ruby method doesn't need to, but not because Ruby is better, but because the Ruby method is an instance method. A Ruby class method would not only have to check for nil, but also for completely different types. The Java method loops through the characters and checks if they are whitespace. The Ruby one just calls strip to remove the whitespace. I'm not sure if the Ruby strip creates a new string or modifies the instance (Ruby strings are mutable) but either way that's quite different from the read-only Java version. A Ruby version that was equivalent to the Java version would be much the same code, as would a Java version that was equivalent to the Ruby version.

Another example was using Ruby meta-programming to dynamically create test methods for a list of cases. But rather than impress me, it just made me ask why? Why not just loop through the cases in a single test method - no fancy meta-programming required.

The funny part is that Ruby does have definite advantages for some things, but the examples didn't really show that. Maybe it's just hard to come up with good examples.

Of course, at RailsConf they're mostly preaching to the converted, so everyone just laps it up. Not being a particular Ruby/Rails fanatic and being involved with other languages, I'm a little more critical.

I'm also not totally convinced about the whole meta-programming thing. Yes, it allows some pretty amazing things. But it also allows some things that are very twisted, hard to comprehend and debug.

Still, it was a good session containing some pretty interesting material.