"Objects on Rails" Book Writeup
July 11, 2012
What’s the point?
This book takes the form of an “engineer’s notebook” and examines a handful of
alternative OO-patterns to make your Rails applications more flexible and maintainable.
How was it?
Though at times I felt in over my head, I really enjoyed the book. It was at the perfect
intermediate level that I have been seeking lately. While I didn’t fully grok everything,
I can always return to the text when I do encounter some of the more subtle problems.
The patterns discussed - particularly the Exhibit pattern - were new to me and the
author did a good job of showing the “before and after” versions to illustrate why you
might want to use them.
The sections on isolated, fast unit testing were helpful, though I’m still a bit
uncertain about when to use a stub vs OpenStruct vs Object.new. This is kind of a
trap topic for me, as I find I am sending too much time trying to figure out the
optimal way of doing TDD in Rails - instead of just getting my hands dirty first and
optimizing later.
It was nice to see how topics I was familiar with from other contexts (dependency injection, aggregate root) fit into a Rails app.
Who should read it?
Anyone with interest in the on-going “how to do OO in Rails” debate;
basic-to-intermediate Rails knowledge required to get the most out of this book