Ruby Insurgency

The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC Andrew Hunt RUBY INSURGENCY

What is “insurgency”?
Main Entry: in·sur·gen·cy Function: noun Date: 1803 1 : the quality or state of being insurgent; specifically : a condition of revolt against a government that is less than an organized revolution and that is not recognized as belligerency

The Battlegound
Fortress of corporate IT
Guarded by trolls
Fiefdoms devoted to
tools, languages,
methodologies, etc.
Corporate I.T. X

How did Perl get in?
Non-threatening, non-mission-critical
“ Playing with the web”
Better than /bin/sh, awk, cut, sed, ...
Became mission critical!
Ubiquitous, but still messy

How can Ruby get in?
Ruby is better than Perl
Better extensibility
Evolution of Ruby programs over time
Easier addition of C code modules
Better maintainability
Easier to read
Easier to understand
Principle of Least Surprise

Ruby offers ease and clarity of expression

How to leverage Ruby’s strength
RubyLearn
RubyGlue
RubyFace
RubyHack
RubyRules
Least threatening Most threatening

RubyLearn Ruby as CASE tool

RubyLearn
No Ruby in development
No Ruby in deployment
Ruby as a “mental amplifier”

RubyLearn
Central activity to programming is learning
The problem domain
Domain language and business processes

RubyLearn
What customer/client needs and wants
Bits of technology (Java API’s, et al)

RubyLearn
System behavior, especially:
under load
given bad data

RubyLearn
Algorithm Design
Small, specific problem
An ADT, new algorithm, or combination
Stateful considerations
Range and boundary semantics

RubyLearn
Architectural Spike
Executable “big block diagram”
Design by Contract across major interfaces
Quickly run and validate assumptions
(Like XUML, but more realistic and flexible)

RubyLearn
Module Prototyping
Low-friction refactoring
Tests
Mock Objects
Interfaces
Refactor rapidly as you learn key relationships and characteristics

RubyLearn – Key Points
Low-friction
Clarity of expression, easy to map to deployment language
Quick and easy to modify/adapt as you learn
Text based format amenable to tools

Low-friction
Verifiable
Unlike diagrams, can actually run it

Low-friction
Verifiable
Not much competition in this space
Old hands use Smalltalk for this purpose (some Python)
Newbies not used to thinking first

RubyGlue Ruby runs development

RubyGlue
Ruby in development only–
No Ruby in deployment

RubyGlue
Strong area for Perl:
“The Swiss-army Chainsaw”
Powerful, but very messy
Constrained to the blades available
Gluing disparate bits of tech is hard
Even harder trying to decode ${${$x[2]}[3]}[5] or $$a[2][2]

RubyGlue
Ruby is not a Swiss-army chainsaw
More like a Star Trek™ replicator
Say what you want, you get it
“ Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”
Makes supporting development easy

RubyGlue
It needs to be right
It needs to be right now
It needs to be maintainable

RubyGlue
Project Support
Post nightly build output to web
Annotate, hyperlink or highlight logs
Customized Wikis
Manage football pools, baby pools, etc.

RubyGlue – build automation Source files Other inputs Build processor - make - ant - Aegis Executable code Passed tests Documentation Database construction make make schema make doc make test

RubyGlue
The Nightly Build
* Current build status:
There were 2 errors or unexpected exceptions
4 Java unit tests failed:
com.loser.library.time.test.TestBasicZone
com.loser.library.xmlapplication.test.TestXmlApplication
com.loser.server.search.test.TestGetCalcConsReads
com.loser.server.security.test.TestSecurity
Build FAILS as of Friday, October 12 at 10:34AM.
* Most Recent Log
* DeveloperHandbook -- How to set up and develop code for this project
* Project-wide Java doc

RubyGlue – annotated log

RubyGlue
Build and Release procedure
Oversee different compilation environments
Assembling release
Burn the CD-ROM or upload to ftp server

RubyGlue – nightly build Developer 1 Source Source repository Automated build system C heck out source Issue build products Publish results Developer 2 Source Run automatically

RubyGlue
Regression Test Automation
Setting up database for unit tests
Run and analyze output
Notify team of build failures (e-mail, pager)

RubyGlue
Documentation and Code generation
As a straight code generator
Telephone routing application:
6k Ruby generating 150k of C++ code

RubyGlue
Documentation and Code generation
Tweak results from other code generators (yacc, lex, java2idl)
Create SQL load scripts for database from doc
Documentation beyond capabilities of JavaDoc

RubyGlue
All the things we would have used Perl for
Much easier
More maintainable
Preserves intellectual property
IT JUST WORKS.

RubyFace Ruby combines existing components

RubyFace
Ruby in limited, special-purpose deployment
Satisfy custom need based on existing components

RubyFace
Good products are scriptable
Many turn to Python for this role
Create more complex tests faster using Ruby scripts to call internals
Easier to add composite functionality for custom jobs
Leads to “Ruby on Top” architecture

RubyFace Ruby C code C++ code Other (via C)

“Ruby On Top”
Ruby code defines available product
Functional core written in
Java
C
C++
Fortran
Eiffel
Anything you can bridge via C

RubyFace – Example
Telephone switch testing harness
Uses Ruby to test commercial phone switch
Drives 100,000 lines of C code

RubyFace
Best of both worlds
Preserves existing functionality
Leverages Ruby’s flexibility
Get used to the idea of deploying Ruby
Like Eiffel’s Component Combinator (ca 1997)

RubyHack Ruby for one-time custom apps

RubyHack
Pure Ruby, but small and focused
Not mainline development
Doesn’t depend on existing functionality
Just hits the database
Calls CORBA services
Munges flat files related to the app
Hacks the Registry

RubyHack
Provide new capability without altering main product
Correct errors in deployed product environment
Provide diagnostic or debug information

RubyHack
But how do you convince folks to deploy Ruby just for this?

RubyRules Ruby as the deployment language

RubyRules
We’ve used Ruby as design tool
We’ve got Ruby running the development process
Deployed Ruby as scripting engine to existing product
Deployed Ruby standalone as an add-on to existing product

RubyRules
You write the project in Ruby
Test it with Ruby
Deploy it with a Ruby installer

Ruby Rules
You’re in.
Everybody wins.

The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC / dy [email_address] www.pragmaticprogrammer.com

Ruby Insurgency

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Ruby Insurgency

by vishnu

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Ruby Insurgency Presentation Transcript

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