Garden City Ruby 2014 - The Dark Side of Ruby by Gautam Rege

All right, good morning people.

After a bright talk this morning by Ajey,
it's

time to get dark and dirty, OK. So I'm

from Josh Software, and it started in 2007.
These

are my Twitter handles. And I'm also an author.

I have a couple of books which are out.

Well it doesn't look so dark anymore, does
it?

So what is my talk gonna be about? Don't

worry. It's not gonna be anything scary. I
love

Ruby. But as with every marriage, and I hope

there's no Ruby in the crowd - OK. As

with every marriage you also need to know
the

other side. You know the side you were -

you didn't know when you were just going around.

But it's the same thing with Ruby. You have

to know what you're looking at. And my talk

is going to be about the weirdness and the

gotcha moments. In short, in my talk, if you

find 'Ah-ha!' moments, it's working. Oh, we
have a

varied audience today. So to ensure sanity,
I have

tagged my slides. My slides are tagged with
my

good friend bumblebee to keep it neutral,
that these

are for beginners. So you must pay attention.
And

the experts, try to give the beginners a chance

to give the answer. And the experts, you know,

take your inspiration from Optimus Prime.
And the beginners

can choose to tune out, but whatever you learn,

the better. So let's get started with the
infamous

infinity. Now, we all know what infinity is,
right?

And since we are all programmers, obviously
we should

know the answer to this one. What's the answer?

There are no surprises here. No surprises
there. No

division by zero. We know this. What about,
what

about this? Oops. This actually works. So
we know

that everything in Ruby is an object. So that

looks like a, that looks like a class. So

let's see what the hell that is anyway. If

you type this out, what do you think I

get? So... what's going on here? So infinity
is

a constant define in the float class. Where
do

you see it, you don't see it there. I

can use this constant to form range comparisons.
I

can use it with equality operators and stuff
like

that. Imagine three equal to equal to infinity.
But

it works. Oh well. So. This is the way

I get people warmed up. Let's do something
with

more of an adrenaline rush. Base conversions.
It's a

lot of fun. So what do you think is

the output of this particular thing? Now,
I don't

want all the math geeks going to their calculators,

but essence is converting a number to a string

in the octal format. So again, no surprises.
Should

be fine. But let's push the tempo. Now what?

That, actually works. The next time you are
reading

about, and you hear a name like getafix, ??

(00:03:57:07). You know oblix, asterix. It
need not be

a name, it could be a number. Well, now

what? Push the limits. Oops. So now if you

look at it a little logically, the radix as

a portion ?? (00:04:15:18) is supported only
in thirty-six,

because you have twenty-six alphabets and
ten digits. So

it can go only up to a radix of

thirty-six. So if there are some innovators
out there,

who want to actually get a new alphabet into

the English dictionary, we could probably
have a radix

of thirty-seven. OK. Let's move on to the
star.

Not the rock star, but the star operator.
And

to start with, let's see what it has to

do with Splat Expander. Oh boy, we see more

and more of Ruby code right now. So what

do you think is name and occupation here?
As

we can see we have a struct which takes,

which has two somethings, name and occupation,
and I

create an object off the struct. Now what
do

we see? Nothing fancy. We're still good. Right?
So

the Splat Expander is actually taking my arguments
and

given me the right name and the right occupation.

But we don't do things like this, do we?

We usually - we are Rails programmers. We
work

in Rails, so we usually have stuff like this.

We use keyword arguments. We all have keyword
arguments

to initiate a class like this and stuff. What

is the output now? It's Optimus Prime, so,
the

experts? What is name and occupation? Here
it's changed.

That's because the struct always has an array
of

arguments. It does not differentiate between
this. This will

not work on a class. Well, let's get to

something more funny. What about this? How
many here

have used this before? We know how to convert

an array into hash. How many of you have

used this notation before? All right-y, I
have two

people in the audience. Excellent. What happens
now? What

does this do? It actually converts to a hash.

And out of curiosity what if I add a

seventh element in the array? Error. No like,
dude,

I don't know what to do, what should I

do with the last one? Well, let's try some

more stars. Who all thinks that the output
of

this is gonna be three, six, and nine? Who

all think otherwise? What's the output? Awesome.
And now?

That was easy wasn't it? Now what? String
??

(00:07:04:24). That's all actually works.
And let's take it

to the next level. How many here know about

Stabby, Stabby proc? Here is a sample. So
this

is a Stabby proc that we have which takes

- note we are still working with star. So

if I make an invocation ?? (00:07:23:07) to
the

block like this, what is the output? Mumbling,
mumbling,

mumbling. It's five. And now you say, I knew

that. Right. So basically the short form for
the

first, second last, last, and the rest of
the

stuff is in the middle. Pretty helpful thing
to

know. This works on all. It not, it's just

not worked with the Stabby proc, it'll work
with

Lambda, it'll work with a method, too. But,
as

with Ruby, and, if I'm supposed to be standing

here and I'm supposed to be lecturing you
on

all this, I'm supposed to know my stuff. Lo

and behold, when I was trying these experiments,
I

learned something new. What do you think is
the

output of that? That actually works, and I
have

freaking no idea how. So, well let's put in

the slide, and if I have somebody looking
explain

to me how does that dot notation just work?

And it works only on this. It will not

work on a method obviously, right. But it
works!

So, welcome to the weirdness of Ruby. Well.
Getting

onto really complex stuff. Case statements.
How many of

you have - you all have used cases, right?

Case when and stuff like that. Why do you

think this works? And I've tried to make the

example as complex as possible. All right.
If Optimus

Prime doesn't do this who the hell else would,

right? So what is the output? It's pretty
obvious

that we have a multiple of three, because
nine

is a multiple of three, and yeah, because
we

can all read in English and Ruby gives us

readable code. We know the output here, right?
Well

it's true. You're absolutely right. Ruby's
not that weird.

It'll give you the right answers. But my question

is: multiple_of is a method, right? It takes
one

parameter, which I have passed. How was it
compared

with nine? Where did nine come into the picture?

Behind every case, behind every successful
case, is a

case equality operator. So what actually happens
is that

that number nine is used with a case equality

operator. And that case equality operator
is an alias

to the proc call, which actually gets us our

output. Well. Though this seems pretty straightforward,
it has

just given me immense power. I can now manipulate

any way that I want a case equality operator

to work. Simply by over riding the equal to

equal to equal to method - the case equality

operator. And I am good to have any sort

of case comparisons that I want to make. I

don't care what happens, but it's my call
anymore,

right. Speaking of case equality operator,
let's go to

equality. How many of you all know these symbols?

There are operators, an eql question mark,
and equal

question mark. Let's have some fun. Any takers?
Who

all think the output is true? Who all think

the output is false? What happened to the
rest

of the people? Don't care. Don't care. That's
bad

for a conference. You know we just got a

huge lecture about participation! Again, who
all thinks it's

true? Who all think it's false? Why? Oh, come

on man, Ruby's gonna be really neat. Of course

it's true. Well, what do you think now? Anybody

think it's true? All right man. Stand up dude.

Please give him a welcome, because he's got
it

absolutely right. What the hell happened to
the rest?

Dude, we just saw the slide before about case

equality. Are you telling me if you use that

in a when statement it's not gonna work? Of

course it's gonna work. You're just comparing
to one.

And... now what? True? How many people think
it's

true? How many people think it's false? Why?
So

people called false but thought it was true
but

didn't want to answer. Well it's false, and
I've

got you guys so motivated you don't want to

answer, right. Damn it. But this is actually
equality

by value. So the value returned by the object

is one, the value returned by the float is

a floating point one. It's completely different.
Now what?

Now it's interesting. Why is it false? Somebody
said

very confidently, why is it false? Absolutely.
Now here's

the weirdness. This stuff actually compares
the object ID

of the two, and a integer and a float

would have two different object IDs. It's
obvious, right

fellas? So. Aiy aiy aiy, true false, what's
it

guys? There string 'a' and string 'a' are
two

different ruby objects. If I switch that two
a

symbol - thank you that's where you go. So

with that, let's hit the jackpot. How many
of

you all know what curry is? It's a lot

of fun, a lot of fun. But to make

it funnier, I actually decided let's have
the slot

machine get three pulls. And I wrote code
for

it on my flight here, so I have no

idea whether that's correct or wrong, but
like, we

know it seems a little weird though. I've
tried

to compare if all the three pulls are equal

and then I'm preparing some recipe with curry,
and

do you think it would work? It just looks

a little bit of weird code, but I shall

explain. So curry is a method in the proc

class which actually returns a lambda if all
the

parameters are not fulfilled. So in this particular
case,

I needed three parameters, X, Y, and Z, and

in the first statement, I passed only one.
Note,

the invocation is in square brackets. It's
different. And

it returns me a lambda, but other times when

all the parameters are actually fulfilled
in the second

statement, it actually evaluates the proc.
Now if you

had to write the same code you would have

taken different types of input, weighted for
the user

with (00:14:18:29) ...?? one, two, three,
and evaluated it.

You don't need to do that. And these things

can actually be very helpful. So curry away.
So!

So you think you can tell protected from private.

OK, I am not a - I'm a better

programmer than a singer. Right. Private methods.
All of

us have been taught since school, unfortunately,
that private

methods are not inherited. Are they inherited?
As you

can see, foo is a private method. And I

ran out of creativity, so I just went to

the standard base type foo, blah blah blah
here.

Is this going to work? All of us take

a lot of things for granted. How many of

you all knew this already, that private methods
are

inherited in Ruby? All right, OK, now I'm
scared.

How many of you all didn't know this? Don't

be shy, don't be shy. OK, so this is

actually one of the basic principles of where
Ruby

actually breaks traditional object oriented
concepts. All private methods

are inherited. What? How many of you all have

seen this code before? Forget the Mongoid::Document
but include?

Wait, come on. Everybody knows it! What is
include?

Is it a keyword? How many thought it was

a keyword? Oh it's like that, require or that

import in Java. Include is a private instance
method

defined in the class module. So while that
is

sinking in, it raises a basic question. All
private

methods are inherited. So what are protected
methods? So

what about protected methods? So what's the
difference between

private methods and protected methods now?
We were told

in our school that protected methods are inherited
but

not publicly accessible, right. Now private
methods are inherited

but not publicly accessible, right? So what
are private

metho- protected methods? Contrary to popular
belief, in Ruby

protected methods actually work with objects
and not classes.

And you can invoke a protected method on another

object within the same lineage. And I say,
what

the... what? Better explained with an example.
Simple example,

for the sake of brevity I put the initializer

in one line. What is the output, people? Don't

be shy. You have bumblebee to help you out.

No takers. Come on man, that's like pretty
obvious

right. You can't call a protected method on
an

object, right? Simple stuff. However. Now
beginners, so-called beginners

can tune out. This is fun. I added a

method called fights. Same piece of code.
What is

the output? Take a wild guess, man. Go for

it. So either Megatron or Decepticon. Any
other deceptive

ideas? Guys, very practically, a quick lesson
in human

psychology. If that didn't work, would I have
that

slide up there again? It works, man. It works.

But why did it work and how did it

work? The interesting part is that piece of
line,

earlier in the previous slide, prime dot nick
did

not work, but here target dot nick actually
works.

I have called a protected method on an object.

Now that same lineage means that because I'm
inside

the class Autobot, because I'm calling a method
on

the prime object, which is in, which is in

Autobot class, and since another object called
Megatron there

is of the same lineage, it's also an Autobot.

I can call the protected methods. So why didn't

it work earlier? Because everything in Ruby
is an

object. If you're trying to start prime dot
nick

and the previous case was outside the scope.
So

it was effectively in some main class, not
the

same lineage, so it doesn't work. So Ruby
actually

works in the traditional way, but has different
internal

meanings. And if now this was getting a little

complicated, how many of you all thought there
are

keywords in Ruby? Cause that man there is
gonna

come and shoot you if you think Ruby has

keywords. Does that code work? Is it even
valid?

Should it give me a syntax error? If, how

many of you think it will give me an

error? Syntax error too? What's wrong with
you? Have

you gone mad?-kind of errors. Any takers for
syntax

errors? Probably not. But if not, then I want

to ask you know what is the output of

this code? Seriously. There it is, seriously.
Question is,

how many of you all thought this is an

error called stack_too_deep. Cause when I
call false it

calls true, once you call true it will call

false. And it goes into a recursive loop and

case stack_too_deep. Any takers for stack_too_deep?
Higher, higher! And

how many think it will actually work? All
right.

The rest of the people, you all are beginners.

But yeah this works. So it does not stack_too_deep.

This actually works because true, true's resolution
is immediately

determined as the boolean value. However if
I had

changed these two particular statements, the
content in the

methods to self dot false and self dot true

I would probably get stack_too_deep. Not probably,
definitely get

stack_too_deep. OK. So. If this wasn't complex
enough for

you, let's go to modules, the mysterious modules.
You

know what the bull I have with my good

friend module, which has power, Megatron is
super powerful,

and he's a force, he's evil. And I want

to put that in my class Hanuman. note the

star, because that's true. I want the power
of

Megatron with Hanuman. Hanuman! Unfortunately
this will not go

down too well religiously for us, because
though it

will be Hanuman will be as powerful as Megatron,

Hanuman is now evil! So what do I do?

Is there a way I can cherry-pick from Megatron,

saying, I want the power of Megatron but I

don't want to be evil? What do I do?

I require. Note, I have not included Megatron,
I

require the Megatron method- Megatron file,
Megatron RB. I

define a method called power and I go to

the module, tell him to give me that instance

method called power, which gives me something
called an

unbounded method. And then I bind it to me,

that is self, and I call it. And that

makes my Hanuman religiously acceptable to
society. Question? No.

So note self, self is the object call. So

it's not working on the class call, it's actually

working on the instance. So every object,
every instance

of Hanuman, will actually get the power of
Megatron.

And with that I end my talk and thank

my two assistants here. I have, I'm open for

a few questions. Do I have the time, guys?

Satish, do I have some time? For questions?
Yay!

We have a lot of time for questions! All

right, you. Thank you. You have a question
there.

QUESTION: What exactly lead you to title this
talk

as the Dark Side of Ruby? G.R.: Oooh. Now

he killed me, didn't he? So that was a,

there's a two-sided answer to that. One was
to

fool the organizers, to get the CF?? (00:23:05:23)
accepted.

But more importantly, the dark side of Ruby
tries

to bring out the weirdness in Ruby, which
is

not the evil part, but the hidden part. Like

the dark side of the moon where we have

all these kind of stuff that breaks, the gotchas,

the moment that we feel that are going to

help but you don't really need to care about

it, but it's really, really important that
you know

these things exist. That's why Dark Side of
Ruby.

So I still love Ruby - no offense. Any

other questions? Yes sir. QUESTION: So have
you suffered

because of any of these gotchas in you work?

G.R.: Absolutely! This is all part of experience.
Part

(00:23:53:00 ??) is part of experience, part
is training,

and partly is preparation for my talk, trying
to

find out these terms, and figuring things
out. There's

a lot of stuff that I've actually kept out,

like you know ?? (00:24:07:03) games. Lots
of fun

with method missing. I haven't even touched
upon blocks

and ?? There's lots of funny stuff which happens

there. But I have only half an hour. So

the question to you guys also is that in

case you find some of these funny things which

happen in Ruby, and are able to explain it

or not able to explain it, send me a

Tweet, send me an email, and I will probably

investigate and improve my talk at your expense.
QUESTION:

Yeah. So the other question is, are there
some

practices, certain things that I follow, so
that I

don't get, I don't encounter these? G.R.:
Well, so

one thing, these aren't problems. What I wanted
to

point out here is that this is not a

bad part of Ruby, but these are the things

that we take for granted. So knowing about
protected

and private being different is important.
But not mandatory

for us to work as Rails programmers. But if

you know that, how protected and private actually
work,

it makes us better programmers. So best practices
of

Ruby are already there. You know there are
things

like flip-flops in Ruby which is for lack
of

a better term, a mind star star star star.

But, I do not recommend it. But it's there.

There are plenty of other things in Ruby,
too.

Which work, which should work, which you should
use.

The bottom line is that Ruby gives us the

maximum flexibility to build the way we want
to

build our code. So with great power comes
great

responsibility. And sometimes it's irresponsible.
So it worked out

great. Yeah. QUESTION: So is there a good
parts

of Ruby, like good parts of Java- G.R.: What?

QUESTION: Good parts of Ruby? G.R.: Oh, good
parts?

Everything! I've been working in Ruby for
six years

and I still love it. QUESTION: No, there is

a famous book called Good Parts of JavaScript,
a

very thin book that allows a subset of language

that is very safe to use, that you can

be very productive in. So do you, have you

come across something that says, like, there's
a subset

that you should stick to and use? G.R.: So

the best part about Ruby that I like is

the closures, which is completely misunderstood,
because every time

I talk to any person who's getting into Ruby

and I show them what a closure is they're

like yeah, that's a loop. But it's not. It's

like far more better than that. And it's far

more - it's more intuitive. It gets into the

details and gives us so much more incentive
about

learning how Ruby internals work, that we
tend to

actually ignore it in Rails. And I only (00:26:30:29)

have a lot of respect for people who have

learned Ruby and gone to Rails, because they
know

the right thing, other than most of us, including

me, who got into Rails and then fell in

love with Ruby. So it's different. QUESTION:
So is

Ruby the good parts the next book? G.R.: Could

be. But I'll need a lot of community support

for that. Yes? QUESTION: Yeah, hi, thanks
for the

talk. Just (00:26:55:09). I have been checking
out Exorcism

dot IO. I don't know if you guys have

heard of it. So it's actually started by Katrina,

who's part of the Ruby Rogues, and I have

had a wonderful time running stuff from Ruby,
like

I have been working Ruby for ?? (00:27:08:20)
for

years and also gotchas- G.R.: So, Exorcism
dot IO.

That's great. QUESTION: Like really good Ruby
idioms that

like so it's basically what happens is you,
there

are around ten languages if I'm not wrong.
You

can pick Ruby, you can sub in your solutions.

People can look at your code. They can give

good reviews. You can help out others with
your

suggestions. Yeah- G.R.: But to add to that,
there

is also some interesting - I'm not sure if

you all have heard of Winbgall (00:27:33:08).
Wingolf was

a gem and a simple tool where you can

report a problem statement, and using whim,
you know

execute that in the least number of key presses.

Similarly there are a few initiatives for
Ruby golf,

where you can actually try things like, the
beginner

?? they actually said they have things with
??

you know stuff like, write this piece of code

without using arrays, or without using the
equality operator.

And then you start, your mind starts churning,
and

then you dig deeper into Ruby and find other

things. So the best way to find these things

is to try Ruby ?? All right we had

a question there too. QUESTION: Not really
a question,

but just a suggestion, actually, to folks
who are

trying to learn Ruby. I like that he pointed

out that some of the things that we've learned

in college, classical logic and stuff doesn't
really apply.

What really helped me understand differences
was that treat

Ruby as a object-focused language and most
of the

languages that you probably end up working
with, Java,

C sharp, they'll be class focused. So concepts
like

private, protected, just like you mentioned,
are all object-level

concepts in Ruby. In fact if you wanted to

draw parallels again JavaScript is a good
parallel because

JavaScript is also an object-focused language.
So there are a

lot of parallels between JavaScript and Ruby, and

less between Java and Ruby.

QUERANT: Yeah, and-

It's like the dot, I'm sorry, that dot thing just amazed me.

??, just having a dot.

and I was actually kind of disappointed when it

ended. I just wanted more. OK.

G.R.: Cool. Thank you.

Yes?

The Well-Grounded Rubyist. A must read.

V.O.: Somebody Tweet about it, please.

V.O.: We'll take one last question.

QUERANT: How does it help to have protected and private method

different from other languages? The way Ruby does it?

G.R.: I'm sorry. Did you ask what is different between protected and private-

QUERANT: No. How does it help to have a different design implementation,

to have it different.

G.R.: Oh. Excellent. And I love answering this question.

Though sometimes it can be a little long.

Why is private and protected different private and protected different in Ruby than

in other traditional standard languages?

Because Ruby did it right.

That's how it's supposed to be.

Example.

You know, when we talk about object-oriented programming,

it's supposed to be about objects. Things that you can see and touch.

For example: Inheritance.

Right. What is inheritance?

In, put it in, no uncertain term, though, it's my

??

Right. My inherited land my from my ancestors.

It's private. It's inherited.

You can. It, it comes within the family.

It can be protected. Can be private.

But, if you have your dad's wallet, do you inherit it?

You can choose to use it. You can choose not to use it.

It's just there.

The inheritance of land can be protected because it always stays in the family.

Like, for example, the money in the family is protected.

But that's always dealing with parents and children.

You can't go, your father. Just because you have a father and I have a father

I can't go asking your father for money.

Right. It's immense, how you determine. And of course public is the same everywhere.

So Ruby did it right, because it's, everything's object-centric.

Exactly what Aman said just now. Everything's object centric.

And, traditionally in object-oriented concepts, it started off right

and then it went all across the tangent, where you had this inheritance, and

classes and stuff like that. All the standard

things that I never talk about: incapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism

which seem to be the essence of object-oriented programming but is not.

V.O.: So, a follow-up question.

I have it. So is there a well-known pattern that makes use of, makes good of

private and protected?

We understand why- G.R.: Good qu-

QUERANT: Is it because it

G.R.: Include. Include. Include is an excellent example.

There are actually other patterns, too.

There are other patterns which allow for protected, protected is used very heavily for

all sorts of, the usually standard, why use protected, for example

protecting your password generation algorithm.

Something like that. But that's the deal with objects.

And since objects can be called only from their own lineage

you're always safe. Good question.

All right. V.O.: Anymore questions?

If there's anymore questions, we'll take it offline.

G.R.: Sure. Thank you so much

V.O.: Thanks Gautam.