Ruby off the rails

I wrote an order processing expert system (see DSL answer as well), converted 100k lines of customer specific perl into about 10k lines of ruby handling dozens of customers. No web components at all, no Rails.

We use [Watir][1] (Ruby library) to test our .net web application.


[1]:

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Where I work, we use Ruby to do a number of different one-off type batch jobs. One example of that is a job that interacts with Amazon's S3 service. At the time, the Ruby S3 library was probably the easiest one out there for us to get up and running in a short amount of time.

Or you could use Ruby to make music ala Giles Bowkett's Archaeopteryx. This [presentation by Giles about Archaeopteryx][1] is one of the best presentations ever. I highly recommend it.


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I have used Ruby for code generation of C# and T-SQL stored procedures in a project with unstable requirements. The data model was encoded in a YAML file and .erb templates were used for the classes and stored procedures. It also allowed for a much more DRY solution than would have been possible with straight C# as repetitve code could be factored out into a single method in the code generator.

We use Ruby to implement our test automation software. This includes test framework and driver code for Selenium RC, WATIR and AutoIT.

Ruby is powerful enough to create comprehensive applications that can interface with Test tools like Selenium or WATIR, while at the same time reading from data files, interacting with a remote Windows UI and performing near transparent network communication. All while running on Windows or Linux.

The uncluttered syntax makes it ideal for new and inexperienced programmers to read. While its totally OO nature makes it easy for these same programmers to apply good (recently learned) OO techniques, from the start.

The flexible nature of Ruby's syntax also makes the use and creation of DSLs much easier. This allows less-technical people to get invovled, read and possibly create there own tests.

We are mainly a C++ shop, but we've found several areas where Ruby has proven quite useful. Here are a few:

- Code Generation - Built several DSLs to generate C++/Java/C# code from single input files
- Build Support
- scripts to generate Makefiles for unix from Visual Studio Project Files
- scripts for building projects and formatting the output for Cruise Control
- scripts for running our unit tests and formatting the output for Cruise Control
- scripts for manipulating Visual Studio projects and solutions from the command line
- Integration Tests - We can crank out tests much quicker and cleaner using Ruby than C++
- QA's entire testing suite is written in Ruby

Ruby is basically my go to tool for where it makes sense. And it makes sense in a lot of places.

Does *part* of Rails count? We've used Ruby for an ETL application and plugged in ActiveRecord just for its model validations.

I've used Ruby at work for

- A data extractor, generating csv files from binary output.
- A .ini file generator, turning a simple syntax into a repetitive .ini format.
- A simple TCP/IP server, acting as stand-in for the customer's system during testing.

Ruby is also used for Desktop application. Especially the use of JRuby to develop Swing desktop application.