Running software uses computer memory for data structures and executable operations. How this memory is accessed and managed depends on the operating system and the programming language. Many modern programming languages manage memory for you, and Ruby is no different. Ruby manages memory usage using a garbage collector (also called gc). In this post, we’ll examine what you, a Ruby developer, need to know about Ruby’s gc. Use the links below to skip ahead in the tutorial.

PHP is a server-side scripting language for creating your website’s backend system that can serve webpages, communicate with databases, and exchange data over the internet. A decent backend framework like PHP needs to be capable of providing and processing data in any format (e.g., XML, JSON, etc.) to be socially accepted in a society of skilled web development frameworks.

Lambdas are a powerful feature of the Ruby language. They allow you to wrap logic and data into a portable package. In this post, we’ll cover how and when to use lambdas. You'll also learn about the difference between lambdas and Procs, and the performance profile of lambda functions. The code examples have been tested with 2.6 and 2.7 and should work with most modern Rubys.

It is widespread to have parent-child associations in Rails applications. On the parent side is a :has_many association, and on the child side is a :belongs_to association. Examples include an article with comments, or an author with books--the former is the parent, and the latter is the child. It is often useful to display a count of the children alongside information about the parent, without necessarily loading all the child records.

Elixir describes itself as "a dynamic, functional programming language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications." Although it's a relative newcomer, Elixir is built on top of the functional programming language Erlang. Elixir is capable of using any Erlang library, and is ideal for use cases such as web development and distributed and low-latency systems. The power, dynamism, and feature-rich toolset of Elixir have made it somewhat of a "cult classic" among programmers.

Tired of waiting for sluggish HTTP requests to complete before your backend code can proceed with other things? Sanic is an asynchronous web framework in Python, that is built to be fast. In a world where Flask and Django are the most preferred web development options in Python, Sanic is the new kid on the block. It’s a promising alternative that is not only faster but also delivers efficiency, simplicity, and scalability.

“All code and no logging makes John a black box error-prone system.” Logging is a key aspect of monitoring, troubleshooting and debugging your code. Not only does it make your project’s underlying execution more transparent and intelligible, but also more accessible in its approach. In a company or a community setting, intelligent logging practices can help everyone to be on the same page about the status and the progress of the project.

When it comes to web development, middleware is often the key to ensuring everything connects up - even if some of the pieces don’t always match up. HTTP Middleware is a mechanism used to conveniently filter HTTP requests coming into your web application. When it comes to PHP, frameworks often help us get our applications to handle workloads vanilla PHP might have a harder time managing. Frameworks help to manage the underlying structure of an application while supporting existing PHP standards.

If you've been on the hunt for a new developer podcast, then you understand just how difficult and fruitless that pursuit can be. You can spend hours online sifting through coding podcasts, programming podcasts, and DevOps podcasts only to realize one simple thing: none of them focus on your preferred programming language! With thousands of different developer podcasts out there, the problem is magnified exponentially. Fortunately, we at Scout APM have nothing but expertise and time on our hands.

Application performance is always a concern when building in the modern, competitive web and mobile space. At Scout, it’s why we created application performance monitoring tools in the first place. That said, there are steps you can take to build a more performant application. If you are using Ruby on Rails, caching might be one of the best tools on your belt to build a better application.