title: Is there a benefit to Rails' ".present?" method?
body: <p>In Ruby on Rails, is there a difference between:</p>
  
  <pre><code>if obj
    # ...
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and:</p>
  
  <pre><code>if obj.present?
    # ...
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It seems they do the same thing and not using <code>.present?</code> would help keep the line of code shorter and potentially cleaner. I understand that <code>.present?</code> is the opposite of <code>blank?</code> but should we always be using it when trying to determine if an object is "truthy" or not?</p>
  
  <p>Is there a performance difference of some kind?</p>