Ruby Blocks and yield Explained with Simple, Practical Examples

A tutorial on the DEV Community breaks down two fundamental Ruby concepts — blocks and yield — using minimal code examples. A block is a chunk of code passed to a method, written using curly braces or do...end syntax, while yield is the instruction inside a method that executes that passed block. The article demonstrates how yield can be called multiple times and can pass values back to the block. It highlights a common Ruby design pattern where yield is sandwiched between setup and teardown logic, such as temporarily changing a log level or measuring execution time. Using ensure alongside yield guarantees cleanup code runs even if an error occurs, keeping shared logic centralized and callers focused only on their specific task.