# Glossary

The words and phrases you'll hear thrown around the Ruby community, A to Z.

- [Chunky bacon](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/chunky-bacon.md): A nonsense catchphrase from _why's Poignant Guide, and a pure inside joke.
- [Convention over Configuration](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/convention-over-configuration.md): Rails' defining idea: sensible defaults instead of endless setup.
- [Duck Typing](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/duck-typing.md): Judge an object by what it can do, not by the class it belongs to.
- [Everything is an Object](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/everything-is-an-object.md): In Ruby even a plain number or nil is a real object you can call methods on.
- [Gem-naming culture](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/gem-naming-culture.md): Ruby libraries are called gems, and Rubyists love giving them punny, whimsical names.
- [MINASWAN](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/minaswan.md): "Matz is nice and so we are nice." The community's core social rule.
- [Monkey Patching](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/monkey-patching.md): Reopening an existing class at runtime to change it, for better and for worse.
- [MRI / CRuby / YARV](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/mri-cruby-yarv.md): Three names for the standard Ruby you download: whose it is, what it is written in, and the engine inside.
- ["Optimize for programmer happiness"](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/optimize-for-programmer-happiness.md): Ruby's founding value: bend the language toward joy, not the machine.
- [Principle of Least Surprise (POLS)](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/principle-of-least-surprise.md): Ruby tries to behave the way you would expect. But least surprise to whom, exactly?
- [puts debugging](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/puts-debugging.md): Finding a bug by sprinkling humble print statements, no fancy debugger required.
- ["Rails is omakase"](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/rails-is-omakase.md): Let the framework choose for you, like a sushi chef's tasting menu.
- ["Ruby is dead"](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/ruby-is-dead.md): The recurring claim that Ruby is dying, and the specific, sourced reason it is not: it still ships every year and still runs some of the busiest, most valuable companies on the web.
- [The Pickaxe](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/the-pickaxe.md): The nickname for the first big English Ruby book (there is a pickaxe on the cover).
- [The Wrong Abstraction](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/the-wrong-abstraction.md): "Duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction." Sandi Metz's warning against over-tidying code.

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Source: https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)