Ruby Gotchas!

One reason we love Ruby is the “Principle of Least Surprise”. But there are still many ways Ruby can surprise us. Some are good, some not so much. This talk warns you about Ruby’s lurking “gotchas”, from basic differences from most other languages, to ones that often catch even expert Rubyists.

We all love Ruby, of course. One reason for that is the “Principle of Least Surprise”. But there are still many ways in which Ruby can surprise us! Some are good, but some… not so much.

This talk is about Ruby’s lurking “gotchas”, so that you can avoid being “gotten”. They range from basic differences from most other languages (or common sense, or common claims about Ruby), to ones that often catch even expert Rubyists. You will come away with an awareness of some specific things to watch out for, and also some kinds of things likely to be dangerous, that I might not have covered specifically.

I’m a great person to speak on this because I have several years of Ruby experience – plus literally decades of experience in other languages for comparison. :-) I also have prior speaking experience, including at several conferences.

I have given a much earlier version of this talk, long ago, at Washington DC area Ruby meetups (NoVaRUG, DCRUG, Arlington Ruby), but not at conferences per se, yet.

At the start I breeze through some rank beginner things (like how single quoted strings don’t allow interpolation), but then progress on through intermediate gotchas (like using an object for a hash’s default, making all missing references go to that same object) and then to much more advanced things in the end (like comparing procs and lambdas and what happens when you confuse one for the other).

There will certainly be code, but I don’t intend to do any live coding.

I’m self-employed, so having the company cover expenses would be the same as not.