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London Ruby User Group:nil points: a talk about nothing, NULL, undefined, Maybe
nil points: a talk about nothing, NULL, undefined, Maybe
nil in Ruby is neat, simple, and convenient. But it's also problematic. It infiltrates our code, silently, until boom! 'undefined method foo for nil:NilClass' (or - true story, there's no time to explain - suddenly thousands of Mark Zuckerbergs).
In this talk, I take a deep dive into nil, NULL, undefined, Maybe and other ghosts in Ruby and beyond. I want uncover important concepts that I think are obscured by by nil's convenience. And I think nil can be so corrosive it's worth asking why we need it at all. Can we eliminate it completely? Can it be improved?
Sure, there are decent Ruby patterns and practices for living with nil, and I'll take a look at them. But I'll also try to illuminate nil by way of a vintage Soviet computer, Jainism, a billion dollars, a Peruvian tribe, and a Victorian wooden adding machine. And, since this is Ruby, there will some reckless live monkey-patching.
ABOUT DAVID NOLAN
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I've been a Rubyist for 6 years in London, Prague, and Brussels. I've built technical teams and custom software in sectors from financial services to voluntary sector. Now I'm tech lead at Lonely Planet where we're cr
More about David Nolan
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ABOUT THE LONDON RUBY USER GROUP
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LRUG is the London Ruby User Group; a community of ruby developers based in and around London. We meet up at least once a month; on the 2nd Wednesday of the month we have meetings with talks, demos and such-like and then we have pub-based meetups organised on an ad-hoc basis (roughly half-way between meetings).
More about the London Ruby User Group
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PODCAST NIL POINTS: A TALK ABOUT NOTHING, NULL, UNDEFINED, MAYBE
This session took part at the Cut and Polish: Crafting Gems. You can view the other 1 podcast here.
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