A quick note on improving Rails performance using Memoization.

Memoization is the process of storing a computed value to avoid duplicated work by future calls.

# originally, will search + retrieve from database
def current_user
  User.find(session[:user_id])
end

# now, search + retrieve from memory (fast)
def current_user
  # NOTE: this will fail on conditional assignment,
  #       e.g. the returning value is nil or false.
  @current_user ||= User.find(session[:user_id])
end

# now (improved), handle false or nil
def current_user
  @current_user = User.find(session[:user_id]) unless defined?(@current_user)
end

# with parameterized methods, use it wisely.
def user(name)
    return @users[name] unless @results[name].nil?
    @users[name] = User.where(name: name)
end

References