Red Ruby: Threads, Functions and More

Ruby is a powerful programming language, and one of its greatest strengths is its support for threading and functions. In this article, we'll explore some of the features that make Ruby such a great language for concurrency and functional programming.

Threads

Threads are a fundamental building block of concurrency. They allow multiple tasks to execute concurrently, sharing the same resources and running in parallel. Ruby provides built-in support for threading, making it easy for programmers to write concurrent code.

# Creating a simple threaded program
t1 = Thread.new do
  10.times { |i| puts "Thread 1: #{i}" }
end

t2 = Thread.new do
  10.times { |i| puts "Thread 2: #{i}" }
end

t1.join
t2.join

In the above example, we create two threads: t1 and t2. Each thread runs a block of code that simply outputs a message ten times. We then call join on each thread to wait for them to finish executing.

Functions

Functions are another important feature of Ruby. They allow us to encapsulate code and reuse it throughout our programs. Ruby functions can take any number of arguments and return any value.

# Defining and calling a simple function
def add_numbers(a, b)
  return a + b
end

result = add_numbers(3, 5)
puts "The sum of 3 and 5 is #{result}"

In the above example, we define a function called add_numbers that takes two arguments and returns their sum. We then call the function with the arguments 3 and 5 and print out the result.

Functional Programming

Ruby also supports functional programming, which is a programming paradigm that emphasizes the use of functions to solve problems. Functional programming promotes immutability and avoids side effects, making programs more predictable and easier to reason about.

# Mapping a function to an array
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
squares = numbers.map { |n| n**2 }
puts "The squares of #{numbers} are #{squares}"

In the above example, we use the map method to apply a function that squares each element of an array. This is a common technique in functional programming and allows us to write concise, expressive code.

Overall, Ruby's support for threading, functions, and functional programming makes it a great language for writing concurrent and scalable programs. Whether you're building a web application or a distributed system, Ruby has the tools you need to get the job done.