fast-ruby VS normandy

In this perspective, maybe the compilation of approaches by Fast Ruby provides a similar point of entry.

Great article! I'm one of the maintainers of the `fast-ruby` project and I was glad to see that we have a benchmark for those idioms over here: https://github.com/fastruby/fast-ruby/blob/master/code/general/attr-accessor-vs-getter-and-setter.rb 🤓

Stylistically, chomp has a bit more of the whimsy that you might expect from Ruby, while delete_suffix is a nice mirroring of delete_prefix and more explicitly named. Both have similar performance benchmarks and are faster than sub.

If you’re interested in speed, check this repo: even among Ruby idioms there are big speed differences.

https://github.com/JuanitoFatas/fast-ruby

Some years ago I was on a shitty job - not technically, but the company turned out to be inhumane - at a Ruby shop, and on the side I was toying with mini_racer and I just upgraded to some macOS beta where it failed to build. A shitty +1-1 hack† for a compiler flag later and it was back flying.

A month later I received a cold email from a CTO to chat a bit about that PR, turns out they were using mini_racer heavily and forked it for their own purpose, and also created PyMiniRacer for the Python side of things. Next thing I know I got hired. Two years later the company got acquired.

Of course conditionally adding a compiler flag wasn't what got me hired per se, it only got my profile noticed. Probably side projects such as porting go by example to Ruby by implementing a ~1:1 CSP channel API[1], an Electron desktop client for Mattermost basically on a dare[2], ex mode for the Atom editor so that I could have that frackin' `:w`[3], leveraging Blocks to bolt on object-oriented-ness onto C because "closures are a poor man's object"[4], or reverse-engineering the Xbox One USB gamepad and writing a kext to turn it into a HID device on macOS from scratch on a lonely 7+h train ride with passengers judgementally staring at me sideways[4] probably contributed to it a bit.

My takeaway: luck is when preparation meets opportunity; but don't to side projects to get hired, because if you don't get hired then that time is lost. Rather, of all things, scratch your itch, have fun, embrace whatever quirkiness you fancy; no one can take that away from you.

[0]: https://github.com/rubyjs/mini_racer/commit/2086db1bbf2b5de4...

[1]: https://github.com/lloeki/normandy

[2]: https://github.com/lloeki/matterfront

[3]: https://github.com/lloeki/ex-mode

[4]: https://github.com/lloeki/cblocks-clobj/blob/master/main.c

[5]: https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller

Do learn Ruby. You seem to answer your own question! You’re curious about it, worst case you’ll have opened your mind to something else which is only a good thing.

But do not be fooled by Rails, Ruby is quite something else, of which Rails is a very small, opinionated part.

Tips: look at MiniTest source code, Sinatra and Rack source code are quite interesting too.

Shameless plug, a couple of idiomatic Ruby repos of mine:

https://github.com/lloeki/normandy

https://github.com/lloeki/rebel