You're reading from Polished Ruby Programming Build better software with more intuitive, maintainable, scalable, and high-performance Ruby code

Product type Paperback

Published in Jul 2021

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781801072724

Length 434 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

Ruby

Concepts

Programming Language

Author (1):

Jeremy Evans

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Table of Contents (23) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: Fundamental Ruby Programming Principles

2. Chapter 1: Getting the Most out of Core Classes FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Designing Useful Custom Classes

4. Chapter 3: Proper Variable Usage

5. Chapter 4: Methods and Their Arguments

6. Chapter 5: Handling Errors

7. Chapter 6: Formatting Code for Easy Reading

8. Section 2: Ruby Library Programming Principles

9. Chapter 7: Designing Your Library

10. Chapter 8: Designing for Extensibility

11. Chapter 9: Metaprogramming and When to Use It

12. Chapter 10: Designing Useful Domain-Specific Languages

13. Chapter 11: Testing to Ensure Your Code Works

14. Chapter 12: Handling Change

15. Chapter 13: Using Common Design Patterns

16. Chapter 14: Optimizing Your Library

17. Section 3: Ruby Web Programming Principles

18. Chapter 15: The Database Is Key

19. Chapter 16: Web Application Design Principles

20. Chapter 17: Robust Web Application Security

21. Assessments

22. Other Books You May Enjoy

Retrying transient errors

It's a fact of life, at least for a programmer, that some things fail all the time, but other things only fail occasionally. For those things that fail all the time, there is no point in retrying them. For example, if you call a method and it raises ArgumentError because you are calling it with the wrong number of arguments, as shown here:

nil.to_s(16)

You probably don't want to retry the preceding code, unless you expect that something will be redefining the NilClass#to_s method to accept an argument.

However, in many cases, especially those involving network requests, it is very common to encounter transient errors. In these cases, retrying errors makes sense. When making a network request, there may be multiple reasons why it may fail. Maybe the program at the other end of the request crashed and is being restarted. Maybe a construction crew accidentally cut a network cable between your computer and the computer you are connecting to...