What Ruby Can Do for You

Abstract

As I mentioned in the book’s introduction, Ruby is my language of choice. It is the tool I instinctively reach for first when solving system administration problems. To recap, it has principally achieved this place in my affections by

• • Making it simple to write nicely readable code

• • Emphasizing convention over configuration, so a little effort goes a long way

• • Offering seamless mechanisms for interfacing with C libraries

• • Having syntax, extension, and execution conventions that very often make coding the “right” way and the “quick” way the same thing

• • Adopting object-oriented principles so completely that extremely powerful metaprogramming techniques become readily available