This all started when my Son, Micah, told me about his Limelight project. Limelight is a jruby/swing GUI framework. If you want to build a fancy GUI in Ruby, consider this tool.

I have neither the time nor inclination to write a framework like this; but my curiosity was piqued. So in order to see what it was like to do Swing in JRuby I spent a few hours cobbling together an implementation of Langton’s Ant. This turned out to be quite simple.

The result, however, was a mess. There was swing code mixed up with “ant” code, in the classic GUI/Business-rule goulash that we “clean-coders” hate so much. Despite the fact that this was throw-away code, I could not leave it in that state – the moral outrage was just too great. So I spent some more time separating the program into two modules.

The first module knew all about Langton’s ant, but nothing about Swing. The second module was a tiny framework for implementing cellular automata in Swing. (Here are all the files).

I was quite happy with the separation, but did not like the horrible require statements that I had to use. The cellular_automaton component had two classes, in two separate files. In order to get the require right, I had to either use absolute directory paths, or the horrible File.dirname(__FILE__)... structure.

What I wanted was for cellular_automaton to behave like a gem. But I didn’t want to make it into a gem. Gem’s are kind of “heavy” for a dumb little thing like “cellular_automaton”.

So I created a module named “Bauble” which gave me some gem-like behaviors. Here it is:

module Bauble
  def self.use(bauble)
    bauble_name = File.basename(bauble)
    ensure_in_path "#{bauble}/lib" 
    require bauble_name
  end

  def self.ensure_in_path(path)
    $LOAD_PATH << path unless $LOAD_PATH.include? path
  end
end

This is no great shakes, but it solved my problem. Now, in my langton’s ant program all I need to do is this:

require 'bauble'
Bauble.use('../cellular_automaton')

All the ugly requires are gone.

I’m thinking about turning Bauble into a rubyforge project, and making a publicly available gem out of it in order to give folks a standard way to avoid those horrible __FILE__ requires. I think there are several other utilities that could be placed in Bauble such as require_relative etc.

Anyway, what do you think?

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.

He said: “I think I do.” and he pointed me to a website which showed 21 Ruby tricks “you should be using in your own code.”

Trick #9 was the use of the and keyword to couple statements together to make “one liners”. It was billed as a trick that [cough] “more confident” Ruby programmers use.

So I got the pickaxe book out and looked up the and keyword. I showed Justin where it said that the second clause won’t be executed if the first clause is false (or nil!) So if handle_batch ever returned nil, then display_batch would never be called.

Warning bells were going off in my head. This was clearly an unintended use of the and keyword that could have rather nasty repercussions. I thought it was somewhat irresponsible for a website that boasted expertise in programming to tell people they should be using a dangerous stunt like this.

However, handle_batch did not return nil, so the and worked well enough in this case; and we had more to do. So I made my point to Justin and then we kept working, leaving the and in place.

An hour later we were making changes to a function. Suddenly a whole bunch of our tests broke. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?) The failure mode didn’t make any sense. Suddenly a whole bunch of processing simply wasn’t getting done.

It was Justin who said: “Wow, I’ll bet it’s that and. And it was. The change we had made had indirectly caused handle_batch to return a nil.

OK, this was a fun little story. You might think the moral is “don’t use and for one-liners” or “don’t trust websites that claim expertise”. Yes, those would be good conclusions to draw. But I’m concerned about something else.

The “and trick” is clever. In programming, clever != smart. (OK, sorry, that was clever…) Using a keyword like and in a manner for which it was not intended, and in a way that is not guaranteed to work in all cases, is risky. It bothers me.

By the same token it bothers me that so many Ruby programmers use the ||= trick for lazy initialization. I know it works. I know it’s a standard idiom. I’m not trying to stop people from doing it. Hell, I use it too because it’s become a standard idiom. But it bothers me nonetheless because it entered our vocabulary of idioms because it was clever trick; and clever little tricks have a way of turning into nasty little surprises.

Ruby is a fun and powerful language. But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be clever. We shouldn’t be eager to adopt quirky little idioms and erudite little stunts just because they are cute, or neat, or nifty. Code is hard enough to understand without having to think sideways through the next novel application of the ?: operator.

Professionals write clear and clean code. They use their language well. They use their language efficiently. But they don’t aspire to be master tricksters. Rather, they prove their professionalism by writing code that needs no explanation.