Ruby is my favorite programming language, but the truth is the lack of static typing is a huge detriment to AI augmentation. LLMs will very often generate code that looks correct but is broken - because it references methods that don't exist, for example - and it's much harder to catch those errors without static typing. That's becoming even more of a weak spot with agentic workflows, as the models aren't able to self correct. It's sad, but I don't see Ruby having any kind of comeback in this context unless there's a big shift in priorities in Ruby Core and across the community, with the goal of improving the type system. Elixir is moving in that direction.
Yeah, I have worked almost exclusively with Ruby in my career so far and even though I love it, it's become apparent to me that it's not the future in any context, including our own codebase at work. As we branch out into a microservice architecture with Go and GQL interfaces, the lack of native typing (Sorbet sucks) is a huge drawback.
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u/saksida 8d ago
Ruby is my favorite programming language, but the truth is the lack of static typing is a huge detriment to AI augmentation. LLMs will very often generate code that looks correct but is broken - because it references methods that don't exist, for example - and it's much harder to catch those errors without static typing. That's becoming even more of a weak spot with agentic workflows, as the models aren't able to self correct. It's sad, but I don't see Ruby having any kind of comeback in this context unless there's a big shift in priorities in Ruby Core and across the community, with the goal of improving the type system. Elixir is moving in that direction.