RuboCop
Shares rank 10 of 14 linters by recommenders
Ruby linter people recommend for enforcing consistent style, including with coding agents and build pipelines. Critics call it more bikeshedding than linting.
Ruby linter people recommend for enforcing consistent style, including with coding agents and build pipelines. Critics call it more bikeshedding than linting.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Enforces consistent style rules
“This was quite powerful, because I usually thought of linters as enforcers of objective consistency decisions”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Write code like a human will maintain it” “Basic style/linter rules ... paired w/ instructing your agent how to use them goes a long way”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Gemini 4 Argon” Helps coding agents write maintainable code
“there are great tools (like rubocop) that coding agents can respond to, and actually generate very readable, maintainable, and contributable code”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby” “Basic style/linter rules ... paired w/ instructing your agent how to use them goes a long way”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Gemini 4 Argon”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as a poor linter
“Rubocop is certainly rather a bikeshedding tool than a linter at this point.”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Ruby 4.0.0 Preview2” “There are some really bad linters out there like Rubocop”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Ruff v0.16.0 – Significant new updates – 413 default rules up from 59”
Other linters people recommend
The four most recommended other linters, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruff | 115 | 16 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Clippy (Rust linter) | 58 | 31 | 65% | 12 | — | — |
| ESLint | 32 | 22 | 59% | 11 | — | — |
| Biome | 23 | 5 | 82% | 10 | — | Approved |
| RuboCopThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Basic style/linter rules ... paired w/ instructing your agent how to use them goes a long way”
“There are some really bad linters out there like Rubocop”
“You can even put them on the build pipeline, even. No tokens spent at all!”
“This was quite powerful, because I usually thought of linters as enforcers of objective consistency decisions”
“there are great tools (like rubocop) that coding agents can respond to, and actually generate very readable, maintainable, and contributable code”
“and actually "better" since one wouldn't be able to move the pattern around”
“I have 'written' a handful of rubocop rules that are hyper specific to the codebase I work on.”
“works great with Ruby tooling like Solargraph LSP and Rubocop”
“Rubocop is certainly rather a bikeshedding tool than a linter at this point.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.