In object.initialize, is it better to use self. over @?

Question

There's a convention to reference an object's attributes over its instance variables, where possible. Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby says:

Always wrap instance variables in accessor methods instead of directly referring to variables...

This is shown with an example, which I've paraphrased:

class Gear
  attr_reader :chainring, :cog
  ...
  def ratio
    # this is bad
    # @chainring / @cog.to_f
    # this is good
    chainring / cog.to_f
end

The most common way I see to create a new object with an instance variable is this:

class Book
  attr_accessor :title
  def initialize(title)
    @title = title
  end
end

@title= directly accesses the instance variable title. Assuming we are following the the 'attribute over instance variable' convention, is it more appropriate to use self.title=, which would tell the object to send itself the message title=, thereby using the attribute write method, over the instance variable directly?

class Book
  attr_accessor :title
  def initialize(title)
    self.title = title
  end
end

The book talks about 'attribute over instance variable' with reference to reading an instance variable, but doesn't it also apply to writing?

Answer 1

The book talks about 'attribute over instance variable' with reference to reading an instance variable, but doesn't it also apply to writing?

Yes, it also applies to writing. However, the initialize method is special because it is responsible for setting up the object. When you use a setter method, you do that because the setter might be doing some extra work (e.g. attribute-setters in Rails). In an initializer, you usually don't want to have any side effects, so you access instance variables directly.