From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-02-11T21:49:07+09:00
Subject: Re: lost in "=", forest searching for methods of abstraction (bad habits die hard)

2008/2/10, Vladimir Konrad <vk@dsl.pipex.com>:
> Since then I have being using ruby (sporadically and not for big
> projects), but with a bad style (I recognised this, when trying to
> write something bigger).
>
> When I see projects like rspec, sequel and ramaze, I am amazed what is
> possible with ruby.
>
> The question is, what concepts are necessary to grasp to be able to
> create something like that (in ruby), and, is there a good read
> (preferably on-line) about them?

There are some fundamental principles in software engineering that
apply regardless of programming language chosen: basically you have to
carefully think about how you distribute functionality across
different programming artifacts (methods, functions, classes and the
like). In other words, complex systems are built by divide and conquer
and abstraction.  There are different methodologies (top down, bottom
up, various OO approaches) but they all try to come up with a
distribution of functionality that avoids redundancies (ideally no two
methods / classes that do the same) and keeps things modular (so you
can easier reuse).

Off the top of my head I could not recommend a book or other resource
that will teach this.  I tend to believe that, to a good extend, this
is learned from experience.  Maybe looking into OO patterns can help,
because they deal exactly with this question "how do I create my
classes and make them collaborate?":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_pattern_%28computer_science%29

Kind regards

robert

-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end