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Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

patshaughnessy.net

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Re: Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

#3

Thanks for posting this :) ...I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Hey pat, how do you understand the internal code so well ? I read your free chapter on Ruby's Hash table and I loved every bit of it. It would be great if you can share the process you go through when you read the source code, so maybe I can apply it in the future. By the way, congrats for the release !

Re: Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

#4
post #3

Thanks for posting this :) ...I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Hey pat, how do you understand the internal code so well ? I read your free chapter on Ruby's Hash table and I loved every bit of it. It would be great if you can share the process you go through when you read the source code, so maybe I can apply it in the future. By the way, congrats for the release !

I suspect buying the book might yield some info like that.

Re: Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

#6
Before Pat announced he was writing an ebook, I was following the articles he wrote on his blog. He has a real knack for making difficult concepts easy to understand using diagrams and simple language. And on top of that, he asks interesting questions. You might think that Ruby internals are a dull topic, but everything I've seen him cover has fascinated me.

Because I've already learned so much from this articles, I was eager to buy this when I saw the announcement in my inbox.

Re: Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

#8
post #3

Thanks for posting this :) ...I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Hey pat, how do you understand the internal code so well ? I read your free chapter on Ruby's Hash table and I loved every bit of it. It would be great if you can share the process you go through when you read the source code, so maybe I can apply it in the future. By the way, congrats for the release !

Hey thanks for asking - and yes, in the preface to the book I do explain how I figure this stuff out. But basically I: - study the C code for a long time - step through it in GDB a lot - add printf statements and recompile it to print out debug/trace info - actually change it to see what would happen if things were written differently.

A lot of hard work! I do the hard work so you don't have to :)

Re: Ruby Under a Microscope: Learning Ruby Internals through Experiment

#9
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey pat, how do you understand the internal code so well ? I read your free chapter on Ruby's Hash table and I loved every bit of it. It would be great if you can share the process you go through when you read the source code, so maybe I can apply it in the future. By the way, congrats for the release !

Hey thanks for asking - and yes, in the preface to the book I do explain how I figure this stuff out. But basically I: - study the C code for a long time - step through it in GDB a lot - add printf statements and recompile it to print out debug/trace info - actually change it to see what would happen if things were written differently. A lot of hard work! I do the hard work so you don't have to :)

Your process is something I'd like an ebook or screencast about. Perhaps others would find it interesting as well.
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