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cknoxruntoday at 1:45 PM1 replyview on HN

The interesting part is that agents are good at adding the safety layers (type safety) that exist for Ruby, but which add developer/cognitive overhead (such as Sorbet).

I actually find, for some reason, that LLMs seem to be able to be more "creative" when it comes to Ruby (having used LLMs across 4-5 languages). I don't mean hallucinating, but crafting solutions I would not have thought of, even if I've ensured that I've inserted my original thinking at the beginning.

I wonder if there is something about the combination of the expressiveness of Ruby and the way LLMs are closely tied to human language that brings that out. Of course, usual caveat: n of 1 on my own experience, and a dose of bias.


Replies

flatstoday at 3:21 PM

I have had similar experiences & we are not alone: https://bytecode.hr/posts/why-ruby-is-the-better-language-fo....

There are indeed so many compelling arguments against using Ruby these days (e.g. performance, type safety, an increasingly small user base), & yet I continue to reach for it because of this effortless expressiveness (& the maturity of the ecosystem).