Chapter 4. Rails-flavored ruby

Grounded in examples from Chapter 3, this chapter explores some elements of the Ruby programming language that are important for Rails. Ruby is a big language, but fortunately the subset needed to be productive as a Rails developer is relatively small. It also differs somewhat from the usual material covered in an introduction to Ruby. This chapter is designed to give you a solid foundation in Rails-flavored Ruby, whether or not you have prior experience in the language. It covers a lot of material, and it’s OK not to get it all on the first pass. I’ll refer back to it frequently in future chapters.

4.1 Motivation

As we saw in the last chapter, it’s possible to develop the skeleton of a Rails application, and even ...

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