Objects on Rails

Objects on Rails is a sort of “developer notebook” of some ideas and techniques for applying classic object-oriented principles to Rails development. In order to write it I revisited the classic “blog” example, and tried to apply what I’ve learned over the years about OO and TDD to each step. And then at each step I carefully documented what I did, and wrote down the thinking behind my decisions. Sometimes I went on extended digressions about certain patterns and antipatterns. Other times I went down dead-end sidings, thought better of it, and tried to explain the thinking that lead me down them in the first place.

An early reader jokingly called it “how to build a blog in 15 months”, which I got a chuckle out of, because it’s kind of true. I picked a blog example because it’s something that’s familiar to everyone, a kind of “neutral canvas” that wouldn’t distract from the ideas being demonstrated. But the design choices I chose to illustrate are of the kind that are primarily relevant for growing and evolving large systems. Of course, every large, complex system starts out as a small simple one; and a robust architecture comes from making good decisions early on in the process.

label object-oriented, ruby