I think these style posts are great. Keep posting them regardless of what some may say. These are some “style” issues I wonder about all the time. Keep it up!

x = y or logger.debug(’Darn it, y is false or nil again!’)
model.method_with_side_effect_returning_whether_successful and model.save!

These can be accomplished with if/unless, but I prefer to keep actions with side effects out of the predicate and I also want the main thing first.

So I don’t use:

logger.debug(’Darn it, y is false or nil again!’) unless x = y

or:

if model.method_with_side_effect_returning_whether_successful then model.save!

because I don’t like side effects in the predicate, and I don’t like the main thing out on the RHS. There ar eother ways to do these kinds of things, but I just wanted to share where I use “or” and “and.” In these cases, the low binding is exactly what I want.

What would you classify as “functional expressions”?

I think style is important to readability, and readability is very, very important (professionals create boring readable code, amateurs favor clever code). The problem is trying to come up with rules that apply to most situations; the beauty of a language like Ruby, over a very strict language like Java, is it allows for many different styles, allowing the code poet to choose the perfect style that matches her code.

A good example of an important style rule is indentation. This has a significant payoff for things like source code repositories, and thus is worth the loss of stylistic freedom. Bad examples include trying to enforce the length of method name, or favoring long code over wide code (maximum width or inversely the ternary operator over if/else/end).

I have my opinions on many things like method length (long as they need to be to make it 100% clear) and the ternary operator (rarely readable), but I’ll refrain from voicing them, you don’t need more wind to yell into.