Setting aside all the dynamic stuff that you can't statically check, what does Ruby offer fhat makes it so "pleasant" to use?
I'm trying to understand what a statically typed Ruby could bring to the table.
I'm trying to understand what a statically typed Ruby could bring to the table.
I usually compare/contrast to Python's 10 Principles / Zen of Python, which are rather explicitly about the code itself; instead, Ruby has "developer happiness" and "ruby is nice so we are nice". These show up in many, many small ways throughout both the code ecosystem and within the human community (rubyconf!).
There are ofc concrete things to point to, but other comments have already done so, and this bit is a personal fav :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_(programming_language)
For people who want a syntax like ruby + performance/concurrency, but are willing to deal with a different ecosystem and having to do more stuff by hand, Crystal is a nice choice.
(Ruby also has full concurrency, by the way.)
Ruby's way of handling types is abhorrent compared to Crystal, though. Sorbet/RBS are unfortunate systems tacked on after people realized that type systems are actually really good and not really that verbose.
> Your criticism does not seem rigorously considered.
I'm a major contributor to the Ruby specifcation, and I've got a decade of full-time experience in writing about and implementing Ruby and its semantics, so I'm not just doing a drive-by comment.
This is not always for the best, of course, but I reach for Ruby pretty consistently when I need to do that sort of thing--often in a dynamic programming context or where I'm binding a lot of state to present a straightforward DSL to an end user (which Sorbet helps with quite a lot, too). Sometimes, for practical reasons, I'll do that sort of work in TypeScript, but the result usually has a lot more sandpaper to it.
Crystal...just isn't that. At all. It's a fine language for what it is; it doesn't just offer anything that Ruby, TypeScript, Kotlin, and Rust don't, so I have no use for it. But it's definitely not Ruby and it doesn't even smell like Ruby.
Bingo.
I find this discussion often go into the weird "it's static Ruby" / "not almost nothing like Ruby" extremes. I'd go with looks - same, feel - very familiar, inner workings - you can find ways around differences.
Ruby has had concurrency forever, and as of 3.x also parallelism via Ractors.
That's why I use node.js *grin* /s
I suspect that for many users, much of what they like about Ruby is the syntax and core library, and to the degree that Crystal follows that, it will provide much of the same delight that Ruby does.
- Block notation allows for easy composability of logic.
- very easy to make DSLs.
- takes a lot of hints from Functional dynamic langs like Lisp.
For me, it fits my mental model of approaching problems quite well. I tend to write a lot of smaller programs for small tasks and when it comes to general chucking data around, Ruby isn't fast, but I can go from problem to solution with as little extraneous nonsense as possible.
Python is also quite good at this, but I find it a bit less consistent and tend to question my approach far more unless there's a library that already does the thing I want to do (more often the case with Python, though, to be fair).
Python and Ruby have similar conciseness:readability ratios for me, but Ruby has the added benefits of slightly better writability into the mix.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12470715
But nowadays, when I want beautiful meta-programming, I use Clojure.
I think Ruby survives now because of Rails. And Rails is a major technology, so that is a valid reason for Ruby to survive. But it is good to be clear where the advantage is coming from: the framework and not the language.
Ruby has fallen behind, if you want great meta programming, you can get all the joy, plus much better speed, by using something like Clojure. That also gives you access to the vast ecosystem of Java libraries.
But Rails is a different story. For jumpstarting a greenfield API or CRUD app, there is nothing quite as good as Rails. Django and Symfony and other frameworks have tried to imitate Rails, but Rails is still way out in front, with better tools, and the marriage of Rails tools with Ruby's advanced meta-programming is something difficult to replicate elsewhere.
If your company needs a custom CRM or CMS, Rails remains the best starting place.