The Bike Shed

442: Paradigms - What is a Program?

Oct 1, 2024

Stephanie, an expert from Planet Argon, shares insights from their 2024 Ruby on Rails survey and her journey with Ruby. The discussion covers the nuances of programming paradigms: procedural, object-oriented, and functional. Listeners learn how different paradigms influence coding approaches, the significance of pure functions, and the balance of flexibility in data schemas. Joël shares his scripting style, and they explore how evolving learning methods impact developers in the Ruby community. Tune in for a deep dive into coding culture and practices!

42:22

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Stephanie

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Quick takeaways

Understanding different programming paradigms, such as procedural and functional, can significantly influence a developer's coding techniques and approaches.

The latest Ruby on Rails Community Survey highlights the framework's accessibility for diverse experience levels, promoting hands-on learning through application development.

Deep dives

Introduction of API Middleware

A new feature in app development involves utilizing a middleware gem called Committee, which integrates OpenAPI and JSON API specifications for APIs. This middleware automatically validates incoming request bodies against defined schemas, generating a 400 error if there are discrepancies. This approach streamlines the validation process by not requiring manual checks in every controller, allowing developers to focus on functionality. Both the request and response validations can be customized to fit specific application needs, leading to a more maintainable and error-resistant API infrastructure.

Exploring Pure Functions and Encapsulation in Ruby

03:29

Exploring Programming Paradigms in Ruby and Rails

01:51

Intro

2min

Exploring the Role of Custom Middleware in Application Efficiency

2min

Exploring Data Schemas: Balancing Flexibility and Strictness

2min

Ruby on Rails Community Survey Insights

8min

Exploring Rails: Learning Through Community Experiences

2min

Exploring Programming Paradigms in Ruby

19min

Mastering Pure Functions in Ruby

8min

What is a program? Your answer to this question will determine the paradigm through which you view programming. During this episode, you’ll come to understand how things change once you develop an awareness of your paradigm, and what. To kick off this episode, Stephanie shares key insights she took from Planet Argon’s 2024 Ruby on Rails survey and dives deeper into her history with Ruby on Rails. Next, we dive into the definition of a paradigm and unpack three different paradigms you might hold as a developer: procedural, object-oriented, and functional. Considering how each of these impacts the way that you might approach your work as a developer, and what you can learn from the ones that are less familiar to you. Joël describes his scripting style and evaluates the concept of pure functions and their place in development, and we close by digging deeper into how your paradigm might impact the code that you write. Tune in to hear all this and more.

Key Points From This Episode:

The EPI feature that Joël has started to build out for his client.
Why Stephanie is excited about the results of Planet Argon’s 2024 Ruby on Rails community survey.
What a procedural program is: programming envisions a program as a series of instructions to a computer.
Defining an object-oriented paradigm: programming envisions a program as the behavior that emerges from objects talking to each other.
How a functional paradigm envisions a program as a series of data transformations.
Alan Turing and Alonzo Church’s approach to understanding this.
How a lot of the foundations of computer science came to be built before we had computers.
Using Ruby to make judgments and assessing whether or not this is a procedural habit.
Why Joël describes his scripting style as being very procedural.
Unpacking the meaning of functional programming.
Evaluating the concept of pure functions.
Considering how your paradigm may impact the Ruby code that you write.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

2024 Ruby on Rails Community Survey
Church-Turing Thesis
Dynamic type systems are not inherently more open
What is Functional Programming?
Blocks as an abstraction vs for loops
Functional core imperative shell
Testing objects with a functional mindset 
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Joël Quenneville on LinkedIn
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