I frequently find myself writing something along the lines of

class Person attr_writer :best_friend def best_friend @best_friend ||= do_expensive_stuff_to_figure_out_who_the_lucky_person_is end

def best_friend!
    do_expensive_stuff_to_figure_out_who_the_lucky_person_is
end

end

well now you can save a million keystrokes and a thousand lines of code by doing

class Person memoized_accessor(:best_friend) {do_expensive_stuff_to_figure_out_who_the_lucky_person_is} end

It might be evil metaprogramming, but hey, "You can do it in RUBY!".