One of my favorite things about working with Ruby is that it is a tremendously reflective language. What I mean by that is that instead of coming to understand what a program is doing purely by reading code and consulting documentation, there are many ways in Ruby to dynamically ask a program about itself. Unfortunately, all too often I fail to take advantage of these features and I miss out on the insights they could provide.
If you have the same problem, well, put on you overalls and your carbide lamp. Because in today’s episode, guest chef Jordan Raine joins us to take us on a little cave-diving expedition into Ruby’s reflective capabilities. You’ll see how with the help of some standard Ruby methods and one extra gem, we can map out unfamiliar code without having to grep through the source files. Enjoy!