CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2012/ch1 1w23 ph

Ruby Coding Guidelines

Designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan, Ruby embodies syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features and was also influenced by Eiffel and Lisp. Ruby Coding Guidelines include best practices followed generally for most of the object oriented programming languages as Ruby is entirely 'Object Oriented'. Also known as 'Ruby Coding conventions', these are a set of guidelines that recommend programming style, practices and methods for each aspect of a piece of program written in Ruby.

Software programmers are highly recommended to follow these guidelines to help improve the readability of their source code and make software maintenance easier. Naming conventions, class and member design principles, maintainability, performance, documentation and layout are the important areas where these guidelines have to be followed. More important than the reasons for having a guideline is actually adhering to it consistently. Having a coding guideline documented and available means nothing if developers are not using it consistently.