In a RoR app, I want to specialize ActiveRecord\'s update_attributes() method in one of my models, extracting some of the attributes for special handling and passing the res
In Ruby super is a special case where parenthesis do matter...
Calling super without parameter (nor parenthesis) in a method of a subclass calls the same method in the super-class (or its ancestors if the superclass does not define it) with all the parameter passed to the subclass method. So, here, you could have written simply super.
Calling super() calls the superclass (or ancestors) method without any parameter (assuming this method accept no parameters...)
Calling super(...) with any combination of parameters calls the superclass method, passing it the paramaters