Welcome to the monthly dose of static typing goodness in the Ruby world! This month is buzzing with new tools, insightful discussions, and a peek into how AI is changing the game. Let's dive! 🌊
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Cheers,
First up, a fantastic article from Stan Lo from Shopify discusses how AI coding agents are removing programming language barriers. Stan, a long-time Ruby developer, shares his journey of contributing to projects in C++, C, and Rust, all thanks to the help of AI assistants. As he posted on X, this is “how AI coding agents enabled my leap from a decade of Ruby-only development to contributing to Sorbet, RBS parser, and ZJIT.” It’s a brave new world for developers! 🤖
Code documentation enthusiasts, rejoice! sord offers a fantastic solution to connect your YARD documentation with static typing, automatically generating RBI and RBS type signatures. Freshly updated to version 7.1.0, this release brings even more features and crucial fixes, making it the perfect tool to accelerate your project’s transition into the world of types. 📝
The brilliant team at Shopify keeps showering us with incredible tools! ✨ Spoom offers a suite of useful utilities for Sorbet enthusiasts, from generating typing coverage reports to bumping up sigil strictness and interacting with the language server. And don’t overlook Tapioca, which effortlessly generates RBI files for your gems. Both tools just received fresh updates! 🚀 It’s like having a personal assistant for your type-checked projects. 🤖
And for those of you who live in Visual Studio Code, you might be interested in Sorbetto. It is a fork of the official Sorbet extension, focusing on user experience (UX) and maintainability improvements. 👨💻
In a recent clip from the Lex Fridman Podcast, @dhh makes the case for dynamic typing, arguing that it is the “bedrock” of what makes Ruby a beautiful language. He discusses how static typing can hinder meta-programming and that he prefers the craftsmanship of writing code in a text editor without heavy reliance on IDEs. It’s a great watch for anyone interested in the ongoing debate. 📺
The @RubyOnRailsBa recently highlighted an older but still highly relevant post about RBS, duck-typing, meta-programming, and typing at httpx. 🧵 It’s a great read for those who want to dive deeper into the nitty-gritty of typing in Ruby. 📖
Finally, @lucianghinda shared a happy example on X of how static typing can help in a real-world project. He says, “I’ve been using Ruby with Sorbet professionally for almost two years. I joined a project that was already utilizing it and gradually began to appreciate its benefits. No worries, I still like the dynamic languages :)”. It’s always great to see practical examples of these tools in action! 💪
Your essential Static Typing toolset
rbs
official Ruby Signature solution from the Ruby team
repo
rbs-inline
extension to rbs lets you write signatures in line with your code
repo
steep
type checker for the Ruby signatures
repo
sorbet
type signature and type checking solution designed by Stripe
repo
ruby-lsp
essential toolset and extension, which helps with Ruby development in the VS Code
repo
steep VS Code extension
steep integration with the IDE
repo
rbs syntax VS Code extension
ease the work with RBS signature files
repo
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