I like typescript and I think it makes sense:, the web makes you married to JavaScript, so it’s the reasonable path forward if you want types in that context.
But what is the point of the recent wave of types for python, Ruby, and similar languages?
If it’s type safety you want there, there’s a bajillion other languages you can use right?
(I'm not sure if this still holds under a world where LLMs are doing the majority of writing code but this is my opinion from prior to LLMs)
From someone who has worked mostly in Ruby (but also Perl and TypeScript and Elixir) I think for web development, a dynamic language with optional types actually hits maybe the best point for developer productivity IMO.
Without any types in a dynamic language, you often end up with code that can be quite difficult to understand what kinds of objects are represented by a given variable. Especially in older poorly factored codebases where there are often many variations of classes with similar names and often closely related functions it can feel almost impossible until you're really familiar with the codebase.
With an actual fully typed language you're much more constrained in terms of what idioms you can use and how you can express and handle code by the type system. If you're not adept or knowledgeable about these things you can spend a lot of time trying to jam what you're attempting into the type system only to eventually realize it's impossible to do.
A gradual type system on top of a dynamic language gets you some of the best of both worlds. A huge amount of the value is just getting typing at function boundaries (what are the types of the arguments for this function? what is the type of what it's returning?) but at the same time it's extremely easy to just sidestep the type system if it can't express what you want or is too cumbersome.
A bunch of companies started a decade or two ago and became very successful using the dynamic language du jour back then, and now they're facing issues with said dynamism, so they introduce types to fix those issues, see Meta with Hack over PHP and Stripe with Sorbet over Ruby. The point is not for new users, it's for existing users to improve their development environments.
Ruby provides a lot of really nice libraries; and Ruby on Rails - *especially its ActiveAdmin infrastructure* is best-in-class for "build something stupid-fast". Legitimately, I'll spend a day or so per-page on making administrative sites that do a 1/10th of what ActiveAdmin does in like 2 lines. And AA does it much prettier, too.
I write in Kotlin for myself, and Ktor and React or Ktor and Htmx + SolidJS, for web stuff; but those are decisions I made for myself, (edit: and) I know what it's costing me to not have the raw convenience that is Ruby's Active Admin infrastructure, among other things, I'm sure.
I have been programming with Ruby for 11 years with most of the time in a professional context. It's my favorite language :).
I don't care much for types, but it can be useful with denser libraries where IDE's can assist with writing code. It has been helpful in my professional life with regards to typed Python and Typescript.
One potential example that would be interesting is utilizing types for reflection for AI tool calling, the python library for Ollama already supports this[0].
It would make it easier to use such tools in a Ruby context and potentially enhance libraries like ruby-llm [1] and ollama-ruby [2].
If you don’t specify types explicitly they have to still exist somewhere: in someone’s head (in oral tradition of “Ah, yea, those IDs are UUIDs, but not those - those are integers”), or denoted through some customary syntax (be it something more formal like Hungarian notation, or less so - suggestive suffixes, comments, supplementary documents).
They still exist at runtime, and people who work on the codebase need to somehow know what to expect. Having a uniform syntax helps to formalize this knowledge and make it machine understandable so it can assist developers by providing quick hits and preventing mixups automatically (saving attention/time for other matters).
Types may be rarely important for local variables, but they matter for API contracts.
At least for Python (since I'm more familiar with Python code and the Python ecosystem): progressive typing lets you incrementally add typing to an existing Python codebase. So you can have at least some of the benefits of typing for new or updated code without needing to re-write in a new language.
the overall field is known as "gradual typing", and it is an attempt to combine some of the benefits of both static and dynamic typing (or to put it more accurately, to explore more of the benefits and tradeoffs on the static to dynamic spectrum). in the "type checkers for ruby/python/js" part of the spectrum what you are trying to ask is "how much static type safety can I add without giving up the power of the dynamic bits", so for instance you have code that generates classes as runtime (not really compatible with a strictly static type system in the most general case), but specific very common uses of code generation, like python's dataclasses, have support within the type checker.
In large - and honestly even medium - and honestly-honestly even _not-small_ python projects, you often end up losing track of what stuff is.
At one of my jobs, i was often plagued by not knowing if "f" - short for file, naturally, that part is fine tbh - was a string, an io-like thing, a path object, a file object, or what-have-you. Sure sure, some argue this is the magic of python - just try to do whatever you want to it, and if it doesn't work, throw an error - I know I know. I'll tell you that's all really cool until you have 8 different people passing around 8 different types and you're just trying to have the darn program not crash and also not print logs like "could not snafucate file: [whatever str/repr comes out when you print() an IO object]". And this isn't one of those cases where being able to shrug at the type is like, buying you anything. It's just a damn file.
So, when python's types came out, I started going in and type hinting f: str where i found it and could determine it was a string. (and various other things like this - obviously f is just an example). And suddenly after enough of this, we just stopped having that problem. Coworkers thanked me when they saw me in the diffs adding them. People just passed in strings.
I'll also add that in most programs, most types are just primitives, built-in collections, and structs composing those two. So while it's quite nice yes that you can do crazy backflips that would simply not work in more rigidly typed languages, often I do want to just reassure everyone that yes, please pass in a str for "file". And if i've typed it as str|IO then do feel free to also pass in an IO. It just lets me talk to the other programmers in the codebase a lot more easily. I'm not trying to enforce correctness of types necessarily. I'm just trying to communicate.
A large preponderance of the former mindshare of Rubyists in the heyday moved on to other platforms. There's a metric crapton of unsupported and broken stuff. Plus, there are few/no assurances of safety or performance as there are in statically-compiled environments because of the narrow focus on "development happiness" without prioritizing much else. Also, rubygems has governance issues that spawned gem.coop and numerous supply-chain vulnerabilities as there's no mandatory cryptographic package signing and public key management. Oh, and it's not reputation but the unprofessional and unwelcoming groupthink and inflated egos expressed in real interactions get in the way and turn people off.
I like to think of typescript, pycharm, and whatever consumes t-ruby as, effectively, type-directed linters. The types are advisory only at runtime, so the full power of the dynamic language can be used. But at compile time the type can be checked and verified (insofar as they correspond correctly to the types at runtime).
So the reason to add types to python/ruby is that switching to a statically typed language you lose power and expressiveness. But if you use a type-directed linter, you can prevent many of the common errors writing in a dynamic language.
I have the same question. I've been in the software industry since the early 90s and I've seen the "static types are the best thing since sex" fad fade in and out repeatedly during that time.
Having used plenty of strongly-typed and dynamically-typed languages, I really can't say strong typing has had any effect on me whatsoever. I honestly couldn't care less about it. I also can't remember ever having a type-related bug in my code. Perhaps I have an easier time remembering what my types are than others do. Who knows?
Having to support legacy systems with 15y+ development where the system works but you wish you didn’t have to spend so much effort figuring out types?
Or maybe you are an expert with a framework, you are very productive with it, you know the tricks, but you wish it had types support so maintaining these systems would be easier.
Picking a “better” language or learning a framework in another language is not always a pragmatic choice.
> what is the point of the recent wave of types for python, Ruby, and similar languages?
Code that doesn't integrate directly with wires (controllers, active record, websocket, etc)
IMO This is for complex, well refactored, testable code that provides a business layer. Coding larger projects like depot management, shipment, order management, middle frequency trading, customs all benefit from types and IDE help. Types basically scale the language beyond just filling in the blanks in your framework. You can get pretty far doing that, but not far enough. That's why all ruby based companies push for type systems. They know the pain of not knowing what to pass, or refactoring code that allows a parameter to be multiple types.
Languages take time to get used to and to get productive in. IF you already know Ruby, and want the same safety as C# for instance, then this makes sense.
Strong static typing is a must for large scale software engineering. And by "large scale" I mean anything longer or more complicated than like a utility shell script.
These type extensions let you get some of the benefits of static typing for projects already written in Python or Ruby.
Existing ecosystem. As a random example, there's AWS SDK for ruby and python, but not for crystal and mojo. And if you want good compatibility, you're not writing that one on your own.
You could use an entirely different language of course, but that involves other changes and compromises.
First, YJIT/ZJIT do much better when they know the type signatures of methods. You pay a performance penalty for implicit polymorphism, e.g. using a mix of types (Integer, Symbol, String) etc in the same method argument.
Second, from my experience with Typescript, as much as I naturally dislike type declarations, I find it does help LLMs. Having strongly typed libs/gems and being able to mix in untyped app code would be a nice balance.
Yeah. I have the same question and none of the type addicted
folks could answer that. The explanations usually boil down
to "I used C, so now I need types in other languages too".
That's like 90% of the explanations you can see.
Type free languages like Lisp, Python and Ruby have faster software development times than languages that use types.
The developers who are using the statically typed languages, which are slower to develop in, with are being pushed to use the faster languages.
But those developers don't know how to code in type free languages. So they attempt to add the types back in.
This of course reduces the software development speeds back to their previous speeds.
This means the whole thing is basically folly.
If you want a real example you can take a look at Turborepo, which in weakly typed Go took 1 developer 3 months to develop and has 20,000 lines of code. The direct port to Rust took a team of developers 14 months to develop and has 80,000 lines of code.
Exact same program but the development costs went up proportionally to the increase in the strength of the type system.
There are plenty of developers out there who have only used static typing and don't understand it comes with massive software development costs compared to it alternatives.
If you are developing a SaaS and you use duck typing, unit tests and micro-services. You will get to market long before your competitors who don't.
That article was way better prepared than I was prepared for. I like how it translates its code into Ruby's official types-in-headers format. Very nice.
I think this is a nice way to include types into a project if you like it. I know when you're working on large Ruby projects - 10s of thousands of lines across hundreds of files - types become really, really helpful to figure out what on earth is happening where. In the past I've used DryRb and was pretty happy with it; but an even deeper connection, like this, looks wonderful.
is this made entirely with AI (claude)?
I can't get trc to watch. The docs says trc watch is the correct command, but it's actually trc --watch. On top of that it doesn't compile anything or report any errors
I remember a time in early 2000s when everybody seemed to be raving about duck typed languages and how awesome they are. Now we have separate tools for the same languages to implement typing.
I don't programme much any more but the whole beauty of Ruby that it pretty much heavily relies on #respond_to? / duck typing and thus you don't rely on types or class checking at all.
Most ruby code isn't written like that - it's written like most static languages, where objects conform to interfaces / traits / type classes / pick your poison. The community is shifting towards explicitly specifying and statically checking types now. rbs and sorbet are a testament to this.
I wouldn't say it's really a beauty of the language, it may have been the original design intent but time has shown what's actually maintainable.
Using #respond_to? is normally a code smell. The point of duck typing is exactly that it allows you to avoid checking the type of a class. As long as the object responds to the correct messages, the type does not matter.
I don't think you're really losing the ability to check if an object responds to a message ie a_car.respond_to?(:color) just because theres type annotations. And I assume the type checker doesnt yell if you do a_car.color after that -- or if it does there's surely an equivalent to Typescript's `any` to accomplish it.
As for authoring classes, respond_to_missing?/method_missing should be rare, usually in a situation where its the only way to accomplish something. There's never been a reason to write something like:
class Car
def respond_to_missing?(name, priv)
[:color, :color=].include?(name)
end
def method_missing(name, *args, &block)
if name == :color
@color
elsif name == :color=
@color = args.first
end
end
end
Instead of
class Car
def color; @color; end
def color=(value); @color = value; end
end
Or, more idiomatically
class Car
attr_accessor :color
end
And for that last case, T-Ruby apparently covers it with:
> Requires learning sig block's unique DSL syntax.
This is an interesting proposal. But for posterity I am going to critique the critique on the website about Sorbet:
Sorbet is Ruby and while it has a DSL that is no different than any other gem providing methods or objects to use. For example you can define a type and assign it to a Ruby constant. Because Sorbet is Ruby.
In general I would say any type system has its own syntax when you go deep into it and need more than this param has this simple primitive type and the method returns this simple primitive type. So you have to learn a DSL and the syntax of a type system.
This is very cool! I like this a lot. Thank you to the poster for sharing this.
Dynamic languages have amazing dev speed, but once code matures, slapping some types on that code is just plucking low hanging fruit. It inevitably picks up easy bugs and makes the code easier to read, understand, and maintain.
Ruby has had no good solution to dynamic typing, for reasons well articulated by the linked piece. Honestly, that kept me from writing much Ruby recently. Every line just felt like instant tech debt, short of any sensible pathway to static analysis.
If it is at all possible, it would be nice to have a little bit better support for metaprogramming namely around `define_method` and supplying a typed lambda or block for the dynamic method. I can see why this would be a pain to implement, so I don't expect it :).
Otherwise, I think in terms of typed Ruby, this is an incredible undertaking with very well written documentation. Thank you for making this library, I think there's a lot that the Ruby community can benefit from with it. Cheers!
The problem I see with low-type[1] is that it lacks static analysis to evaulate type usage before runtime and, I don't think, it has any support for tooling so you can't get method usage information in the editor.
I think that static analysis could be done with an extension to rubocop via Prism though. Same for documention features via Ruby-LSP tooling.
I think if they worked on those they would very quickly pick up support as the syntax is quite nice.
Until then I think that Sorbet, possibly using RBS-Inline, is probably the best solution. I'd give a notable second to YARD annotations and Solargraph. Solargraph is a much underated project IMHO.
On Firefox, newlines in code blocks are broken for this website. This causes the page to scroll horizontally to accommodate all the code blocks. The code is all wrapped in a single line.
We are seeing multiple attempts to Ruby with types now, previously we only had Sorbet and Rbs (with rbs-inline), but now there is also Low_type and T-Ruby. I am curious about this direction, this shows the language is still growing, changing and adapting.
I've seen some mention Crystal as well, but as far as I know, Crystal has nothing to do with Ruby except sharing similar syntax. Their semantics are completely different. It's not Ruby + types.
I love the idea, even if the implementation is basically a workaround for upstream resistance. Since it's Ruby and the goal is to be concise and pretty, I hope they will spend some extra time on inferring basic things. In the example, the function is obviously returning a string, so dropping that explicit annotation would be great.
In the context of Lua, I’ve taken a liking to LuaLS (Lua Language Server). You can just write your Lua scripts with annotations (where needed) and the language server can help auto-complete and verify type usage. No compilation step needed.
I never tried “typed Lua” variants (such as MoonScript IIRC), but I believe those do require a compilation step.
The playground seems broken, I can't get it to report any kind of error. It seems to accept even syntactically incorrect files (e.g. just one unmatched closing parenthesis).
Yes. The proper way of adding gradual typing like Python, Typescript, and other platforms have. steep doesn't work in the rbs camp and sorbet in the rbi camp is more powerful with static and dynamic analysis, but it's also painful. The half-measures hand-wringing of separate type files, type, checking fragmentation that isn't usable, and awkward magic boilerplate comments are signs of leadership failure. Matz ain't software Jesus, sorry.
AI has become my type checker in a way. I'm writing large Python apps now, and not even installing the Python IDE tools into VS Code. The AI assistants generate and refactor my code understanding the types and making it work. Same with JavaScript as well. AI modifies the code, I run/test it. Almost never any bugs related to typing inconsistencies.
I'm not saying we (humans) don't need type checkers and I love TypeScript, but something is happening where AI might theoretically surpass the power of traditional type checking. Have the power to catch even more invalid code than the static analysis tools, linting tools, etc.. we have now.
[+] [-] kace91|2 months ago|reply
I like typescript and I think it makes sense:, the web makes you married to JavaScript, so it’s the reasonable path forward if you want types in that context.
But what is the point of the recent wave of types for python, Ruby, and similar languages?
If it’s type safety you want there, there’s a bajillion other languages you can use right?
[+] [-] MGriisser|2 months ago|reply
From someone who has worked mostly in Ruby (but also Perl and TypeScript and Elixir) I think for web development, a dynamic language with optional types actually hits maybe the best point for developer productivity IMO.
Without any types in a dynamic language, you often end up with code that can be quite difficult to understand what kinds of objects are represented by a given variable. Especially in older poorly factored codebases where there are often many variations of classes with similar names and often closely related functions it can feel almost impossible until you're really familiar with the codebase.
With an actual fully typed language you're much more constrained in terms of what idioms you can use and how you can express and handle code by the type system. If you're not adept or knowledgeable about these things you can spend a lot of time trying to jam what you're attempting into the type system only to eventually realize it's impossible to do.
A gradual type system on top of a dynamic language gets you some of the best of both worlds. A huge amount of the value is just getting typing at function boundaries (what are the types of the arguments for this function? what is the type of what it's returning?) but at the same time it's extremely easy to just sidestep the type system if it can't express what you want or is too cumbersome.
[+] [-] satvikpendem|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] t-writescode|2 months ago|reply
I write in Kotlin for myself, and Ktor and React or Ktor and Htmx + SolidJS, for web stuff; but those are decisions I made for myself, (edit: and) I know what it's costing me to not have the raw convenience that is Ruby's Active Admin infrastructure, among other things, I'm sure.
[+] [-] rajangdavis|2 months ago|reply
I don't care much for types, but it can be useful with denser libraries where IDE's can assist with writing code. It has been helpful in my professional life with regards to typed Python and Typescript.
One potential example that would be interesting is utilizing types for reflection for AI tool calling, the python library for Ollama already supports this[0].
It would make it easier to use such tools in a Ruby context and potentially enhance libraries like ruby-llm [1] and ollama-ruby [2].
[0] https://docs.ollama.com/capabilities/tool-calling#using-func...
[1] https://rubyllm.com/
[2] https://github.com/flori/ollama-ruby
[+] [-] drdaeman|2 months ago|reply
They still exist at runtime, and people who work on the codebase need to somehow know what to expect. Having a uniform syntax helps to formalize this knowledge and make it machine understandable so it can assist developers by providing quick hits and preventing mixups automatically (saving attention/time for other matters).
Types may be rarely important for local variables, but they matter for API contracts.
[+] [-] matteotom|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] zem|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] atomicnumber3|2 months ago|reply
At one of my jobs, i was often plagued by not knowing if "f" - short for file, naturally, that part is fine tbh - was a string, an io-like thing, a path object, a file object, or what-have-you. Sure sure, some argue this is the magic of python - just try to do whatever you want to it, and if it doesn't work, throw an error - I know I know. I'll tell you that's all really cool until you have 8 different people passing around 8 different types and you're just trying to have the darn program not crash and also not print logs like "could not snafucate file: [whatever str/repr comes out when you print() an IO object]". And this isn't one of those cases where being able to shrug at the type is like, buying you anything. It's just a damn file.
So, when python's types came out, I started going in and type hinting f: str where i found it and could determine it was a string. (and various other things like this - obviously f is just an example). And suddenly after enough of this, we just stopped having that problem. Coworkers thanked me when they saw me in the diffs adding them. People just passed in strings.
I'll also add that in most programs, most types are just primitives, built-in collections, and structs composing those two. So while it's quite nice yes that you can do crazy backflips that would simply not work in more rigidly typed languages, often I do want to just reassure everyone that yes, please pass in a str for "file". And if i've typed it as str|IO then do feel free to also pass in an IO. It just lets me talk to the other programmers in the codebase a lot more easily. I'm not trying to enforce correctness of types necessarily. I'm just trying to communicate.
[+] [-] burnt-resistor|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] webstrand|2 months ago|reply
So the reason to add types to python/ruby is that switching to a statically typed language you lose power and expressiveness. But if you use a type-directed linter, you can prevent many of the common errors writing in a dynamic language.
[+] [-] innocentoldguy|2 months ago|reply
Having used plenty of strongly-typed and dynamically-typed languages, I really can't say strong typing has had any effect on me whatsoever. I honestly couldn't care less about it. I also can't remember ever having a type-related bug in my code. Perhaps I have an easier time remembering what my types are than others do. Who knows?
[+] [-] serial_dev|2 months ago|reply
Or maybe you are an expert with a framework, you are very productive with it, you know the tricks, but you wish it had types support so maintaining these systems would be easier.
Picking a “better” language or learning a framework in another language is not always a pragmatic choice.
[+] [-] nurettin|2 months ago|reply
Code that doesn't integrate directly with wires (controllers, active record, websocket, etc)
IMO This is for complex, well refactored, testable code that provides a business layer. Coding larger projects like depot management, shipment, order management, middle frequency trading, customs all benefit from types and IDE help. Types basically scale the language beyond just filling in the blanks in your framework. You can get pretty far doing that, but not far enough. That's why all ruby based companies push for type systems. They know the pain of not knowing what to pass, or refactoring code that allows a parameter to be multiple types.
[+] [-] happymellon|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wawj|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|2 months ago|reply
These type extensions let you get some of the benefits of static typing for projects already written in Python or Ruby.
[+] [-] viraptor|2 months ago|reply
You could use an entirely different language of course, but that involves other changes and compromises.
[+] [-] Fire-Dragon-DoL|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] procaryote|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dudeinjapan|2 months ago|reply
First, YJIT/ZJIT do much better when they know the type signatures of methods. You pay a performance penalty for implicit polymorphism, e.g. using a mix of types (Integer, Symbol, String) etc in the same method argument.
Second, from my experience with Typescript, as much as I naturally dislike type declarations, I find it does help LLMs. Having strongly typed libs/gems and being able to mix in untyped app code would be a nice balance.
[+] [-] shevy-java|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lofaszvanitt|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ReflectedImage|2 months ago|reply
The developers who are using the statically typed languages, which are slower to develop in, with are being pushed to use the faster languages.
But those developers don't know how to code in type free languages. So they attempt to add the types back in.
This of course reduces the software development speeds back to their previous speeds.
This means the whole thing is basically folly.
If you want a real example you can take a look at Turborepo, which in weakly typed Go took 1 developer 3 months to develop and has 20,000 lines of code. The direct port to Rust took a team of developers 14 months to develop and has 80,000 lines of code.
Exact same program but the development costs went up proportionally to the increase in the strength of the type system.
There are plenty of developers out there who have only used static typing and don't understand it comes with massive software development costs compared to it alternatives.
If you are developing a SaaS and you use duck typing, unit tests and micro-services. You will get to market long before your competitors who don't.
[+] [-] t-writescode|2 months ago|reply
I think this is a nice way to include types into a project if you like it. I know when you're working on large Ruby projects - 10s of thousands of lines across hundreds of files - types become really, really helpful to figure out what on earth is happening where. In the past I've used DryRb and was pretty happy with it; but an even deeper connection, like this, looks wonderful.
I'd really enjoy it, I think :)
[+] [-] jacobjuul|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rauli_|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] omarqureshi|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dymk|2 months ago|reply
I wouldn't say it's really a beauty of the language, it may have been the original design intent but time has shown what's actually maintainable.
[+] [-] systemnate|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] anamexis|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rezonant|2 months ago|reply
And T-Ruby apparently provides interfaces to avoid needing to do this at all (assuming both sides are written in T-Ruby I assume) https://type-ruby.github.io/docs/learn/interfaces/defining-i...
...which is awesome!
As for authoring classes, respond_to_missing?/method_missing should be rare, usually in a situation where its the only way to accomplish something. There's never been a reason to write something like:
Instead of Or, more idiomatically And for that last case, T-Ruby apparently covers it with:[+] [-] gls2ro|2 months ago|reply
This is an interesting proposal. But for posterity I am going to critique the critique on the website about Sorbet:
Sorbet is Ruby and while it has a DSL that is no different than any other gem providing methods or objects to use. For example you can define a type and assign it to a Ruby constant. Because Sorbet is Ruby.
In general I would say any type system has its own syntax when you go deep into it and need more than this param has this simple primitive type and the method returns this simple primitive type. So you have to learn a DSL and the syntax of a type system.
[+] [-] troad|2 months ago|reply
Dynamic languages have amazing dev speed, but once code matures, slapping some types on that code is just plucking low hanging fruit. It inevitably picks up easy bugs and makes the code easier to read, understand, and maintain.
Ruby has had no good solution to dynamic typing, for reasons well articulated by the linked piece. Honestly, that kept me from writing much Ruby recently. Every line just felt like instant tech debt, short of any sensible pathway to static analysis.
This might just get me writing some Ruby again.
[+] [-] exabrial|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] duck|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rajangdavis|2 months ago|reply
Otherwise, I think in terms of typed Ruby, this is an incredible undertaking with very well written documentation. Thank you for making this library, I think there's a lot that the Ruby community can benefit from with it. Cheers!
[+] [-] Levitating|2 months ago|reply
I think low_type is a much more elegant solution: https://github.com/low-rb/low_type
[+] [-] Lio|2 months ago|reply
I think that static analysis could be done with an extension to rubocop via Prism though. Same for documention features via Ruby-LSP tooling.
I think if they worked on those they would very quickly pick up support as the syntax is quite nice.
Until then I think that Sorbet, possibly using RBS-Inline, is probably the best solution. I'd give a notable second to YARD annotations and Solargraph. Solargraph is a much underated project IMHO.
https://github.com/low-rb/low_type
[+] [-] satyanash|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jhealy|2 months ago|reply
The website is quite extensive, but the gem only has ~1.5k downloads. It’s presumably very early on the adoption curve
[+] [-] Alifatisk|2 months ago|reply
I've seen some mention Crystal as well, but as far as I know, Crystal has nothing to do with Ruby except sharing similar syntax. Their semantics are completely different. It's not Ruby + types.
[+] [-] viraptor|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wsc981|2 months ago|reply
I never tried “typed Lua” variants (such as MoonScript IIRC), but I believe those do require a compilation step.
[+] [-] omoikane|2 months ago|reply
The playground seems broken, I can't get it to report any kind of error. It seems to accept even syntactically incorrect files (e.g. just one unmatched closing parenthesis).
[+] [-] cpeterso|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] burnt-resistor|2 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Fire-Dragon-DoL|2 months ago|reply
You can't tell anything about an instance variable in ruby if it can be set from anywhere. Of course it's a special case
[+] [-] bottlepalm|2 months ago|reply
I'm not saying we (humans) don't need type checkers and I love TypeScript, but something is happening where AI might theoretically surpass the power of traditional type checking. Have the power to catch even more invalid code than the static analysis tools, linting tools, etc.. we have now.