If you're curious, as I was, about which one to choose, or why there are both available, or which one is better, then keep reading as I will explain everything you need to know about the differences between symbols and strings in Ruby.

Symbols vs. Strings in Ruby

The Ruby Hash is an implementation of the dictionary concept, where the keys (in the key, value pair) are unique numbers. A dictionary is a general concept that maps unique keys to non-unique values. But the Hash is a data structure that maps unique keys to values by taking the hash value of the key.

Hash vs. Dictionary

Type Driven Development and Ruby might sound like apples and oranges but it's actually very useful.

What is Type-Driven Design/Development in Ruby

I remember when I first heard about strings. I wanted to create a command line application that would ask the user for his name and age.

How to Use Strings in Ruby

I think it’s so cool that the Ruby map method exists. It means that Ruby has support for higher-order functions, and functional programming.

How to Use the Ruby Map Method

When you have a module that you include in other classes, the way you test it might not be obvious. This is what I'm going to show you in this tutorial.

How to Test Ruby Modules With Rspec

A common source of confusion when using RSpec is whether to use let, let!, or an instance variable, for storing state. In this article I’ll try to explain the difference between let, let!, and instance variables so you know which one to choose.

Let vs. Let! vs. Instance Variables in RSpec

Do you find unless to be confusing? I know I do. Especially if it’s combined with one or more boolean operators.

If vs. Unless in Ruby

The Ruby sort method works by comparing elements of a collection through the spaceship operator, and using the quicksort algorithm.

Ruby's Sort and Sort_by

Learn Elixir not because you will get a better job out of it, but because learning functional programming will make you a better programmer.

Why You Too Should Learn Elixir

The term comes from the world of functional programming, and it’s often paired with map. You’ve probably heard the term map/reduce if you’ve been in the programming world for more than a few months.

What Is a Ruby Reducer?

Arrays are probably the most popular data structure you’re going to use in Ruby. Learn what you can do with them and how to use them effectively.

Learn How to Use Ruby Arrays in Less Than 10 Minutes

When it comes to doing the same thing over and over again, Ruby has a few methods you can choose from. But in this article we're going to look at the each method and what you can do with it.

How to Use the Each Method in Ruby

If you hang out in any of the web development communities, there’s no way you don’t hear about the Ruby programming language. Why is that?

What Is Ruby Used For?

Operator precedence might be one of the most confusing parts of the Ruby language. Even the docs recommend you just use && and ||.

Understanding Boolean Operator Precedence in Ruby (&&, and, ||, or)

I first stumbled upon Ruby in 2007. All I wanted back then, was a language that I can build something cool with. I was going from knowing nothing to knowing something, so the information had to be as jargon-free as possible.

How To Learn Ruby

Ruby uses the case for writing switch statements. Learn how case works and how you can use it.

How to Write a Case Expression in Ruby

A Ruby object has its methods public by default, but its data is private. So if you need to access the data, for either reading or writing, you need to make it public somehow.

Ruby’s attr_accessor, attr_reader and attr_writer

As you learn your way through Ruby's OOP, you will eventually stumble upon the concept of object passing. It might not be very clear if Ruby uses pass-by-reference or pass-by-value to send objects to a method.

Is Ruby pass-by-reference or pass-by-value?

Learn about Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Ruby, and become a better Ruby developer.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Ruby

The Ruby Enumerable module deserves the top spot in the popularity contest. It packs so many great methods that it’s hard to think of an application that wouldn’t use it.

What Is a Ruby Enumerable and Why Would You Use It?

Learn the difference about the many different types of tests in Ruby on Rails and when to use each one.

Feature Tests vs. Integration Tests vs. Unit Tests

Removing dependencies leads to code that is easier to extend. In this article you're going to learn about removing argument order dependencies.

How To Remove Argument Order Dependency In Ruby

The way Ruby resolves class variables is not very intuitive and in my opinion, it's one of the few areas where it breaks the principle of least surprise.

How To Avoid The Ruby Class Variable Problem

In my quest for learning a new language I've picked Elm and Elixir, I think both are great languages to learn but for this article, I will be focusing on Elm. To be more specific, I will guide you through the process of building a simple Google Chrome extension using Elm.

Writing a Chrome extension with Elm

Have you ever tried writing a test for a function that takes a block and does something to that block? I recently had to do that same thing and found there was not much written about it so in this post I'm going to fix that, I'm going to show you how to create expectations on block arguments.

How to test a function that yields a block with Minitest and Rspec

Trying to write a Cucumer test for a Google Maps related feature is a bit trickier than you might expect. It involves tweaking the Google Map on the testing environment and using a javascript capable driver like Selelnium. Check out the article to see how you can do it.

How to write a Cucumber test for Google Maps

Every day there's a new library in the spotlight or maybe just a new version of a really popular one like Bootstrap in this case that doesn't always have a corresponding ruby gem that you can install into your app yet. So what do you do? Do you sit and wait until someone decides to write one for you?

How to install Bootstrap 4 in Rails

Helpers in rails are meant to clean up view code by allowing you to extract data processing logic from your markup code. By moving the logic out, you get an added benefit, you can test your 'view logic' easier. At least that’s the most common use case you’ll see in Rails.

Understanding and extending Rails form helpers

Did you ever needed to get the children's children of a newsted tree like structure? Well it turns out, in Rails, that stuff is pretty easy to do. You can use the awesome_nested_set gem and you're all set, everything is right there for you to use.

Nested trees with Ruby on Rails

For a long time, I've been bothered by the problem of using CSS selectors to target DOM elements in my tests (with Capybara). In this short article, I'm going to try Eduardo Gutierrez's suggestion of using data attributes for targeting DOM elements instead of CSS selectors.

Decoupling CSS Selectors From Your Tests

When you are starting out with rails testing there are so many things you need to learn about and thus it’s very hard to have a clear picture of what goes where and what’s the best way of writing unit tests and view specs and integration tests etc.

7 Steps To Better Cucumber Tests

Accessing APIs seems to be pretty straight forward, until you actually do it. There are a few gotchas that I'd like to talk about to make your experience in working with external APIs a little bit more pleasant.

What You Need to Know When Working With External APIs in Rails

Helpers in Rails are used to extract complex logic out of the view so that you can organize our code better.

The Beginner’s Guide to Rails Helpers

Ruby blocks are one of the most powerful but confusing topics when it comes to learning how to code with ruby. Let's put an end to that confusion.

Mastering Ruby Blocks in Less Than 5 Minutes

Even after 7 years of using Ruby on Rails I still have trouble remembering how to properly use all those options available for the link_to helper. Three out of five times I have to fire up the docs and search for the examples (cause that's how I like to read the docs).

How to Use link_to in Rails

Here's a topic that pops up often especially when faced with the common task of testing controllers in Rails. We have some logic inside a private method and we want to test it somehow. And of course, like most things in ruby, there are a few ways to do it which we’ll look at next.

3 Ways of Testing Private Methods In Rails

These days it seems like everyone is looking for faster tests and for good reason since loading the entire Rails framework on every test run makes the process way to slow.

How to Test Controllers in Rails

This is the process I use to create a new Ruby on Rails project. I usually use the latest stable version of Ruby/Rails and it’s companion gems.

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