notes - Ruby Toolbox

source/talks/a-peek-inside-the-ruby-toolbox/aeon-notes.md

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+author: Anton Stroganov (@Aeon)
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+
+[@lsegal](http://twitter.com/lsegal)
+
+Are rubyists writing good code just because they're good testers? No... it's a question of tools.
+
+- Visualization tools
+	- help you know what your code is doing...
+	- Examples: 
+		- Visual studio diagnostics hub
+		- Visual studio debugger can show the call graph of the program as a tree.
+		- XCode instruments shows what UI element was activated in Instruments...
+		- VisualVM shows profiling info as the program runs for Java
+	- great for discoverability, finding out things you didn't even know you should know
+	- Eclipse - show list of Implementors - what classes implement this method, what will break if I refactor it?
+	- Eclipse - call references - what is the code that is calling this method?
+	- These tools don't have to be part of an IDE... example - Firebug! (or chrome web inspector these days).
+		- before firebug, it was much more horrible, because of lack of visibility.
+	- [Ember inspector](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ember-inspector/bmdblncegkenkacieihfhpjfppoconhi?hl=en), chrome extension
+	- [Angular Batarang](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/angularjs-batarang/ighdmehidhipcmcojjgiloacoafjmpfk/related?hl=en)
+	- Smalltalk screenshot... we are barely getting close to what we had in the old days.
+	- Visualization tools in ruby?
+		- memprof (out of date...)
+		- perftools.rb
+		- JRuby - can use NetBeans and other java tools for JVM profiling tools
+
+- Linting tools - basic checking for common problems...
+	- Reek, Flog, Flay
+		- detect code smells, but not common errors.
+		- CodeClimate uses them for grading the code...
+		- But they check code beauty, not code correctness, so they cannot replace testing.
+	- ruby-lint
+
+- Static analysis
+	- more powerful than linting...
+	- Defect finding,
+	- brakemanscanner.org - looks for common flaws in rails code 
+	- "static detection of security vulnerabilities in scripting languages" (2006? paper) - targeted php, but could (should) be implemented for ruby
+	- Fuzz testing, 
+	- Microsoft Research - "Automated Whitebox Fuzz Testing" paper - SAGE (2008)
+	- ruby has Heckle and Mutant github/mbj/mutant, but neither is real fuzz testing, they are more of a code mutator
+	- FuzzBert?
+
+- Symbolic Execution...
+	- Run your code with no immediate values...
+	- Automatic testcase generation... magic...
+	- uses a bunch of intelligent heuristics for input values that will make your algorithm break.
+	- KLEE (LLVM)
+	- Kudzu (JS)
+	- Kiasan (Java, Spark)
+	- there is nothing for Ruby... :(
+
+- Extended Static Checking
+
+- Ruby doesn't really have a scientific community compared to Python or Java... 
+	- Ruby has so many web developers because it has great tools for them.
+	- It needs more tools for other audiences (science, engineering, math) to attract those audiences
+	- Having a broader audience always improves the language...
+
+- Take responsibility... 
+	- great tool ideas are just waiting to be implemented
+	- scholar.google.com
+	- some of his favorite papers: https://gist.github.com/lsegal/7375509