Sometimes, after a few pints in a respectable gathering of Rubyists, someone will ask me “what is the most undervalued module in the Ruby standard library?” There are many possible answers, of course, and some favoritism is to be expected. Piotr Szotkowski, who untimely passed away this summer, did a wonderful talk on the topic a wee while back. My personal answer to that question, however, would be Random. To me, Random is a unsung hero of a very large slice of the work we need to do in web application, especially so when we need things to be deterministic and testable. So, let’s examine this little jewel a bit closer.

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