Ruby

What hackers pick instead

• RustRecommended for compile-time memory safety without runtime cost, fast native code, and strong types with pattern matching; critics cite complexity, slow compiles, a thin stdlib and dependency sprawl.2039recommend
• GoLiked for its simple, readable style, easy goroutine concurrency, strong standard library and good performance; critics say it ignored prior language design, added generics late and lacks sum types.1254recommend
• PythonPython is recommended for its huge library ecosystem, readable pseudo-code-like syntax and fast productivity on scripts and small programs; critics cite slow performance, dynamic-typing pain and dependency conflicts.1067recommend
• ZigA low-level C replacement praised for comptime metaprogramming, explicit allocators and helpful safety checks, though critics say it lacks Rust's memory-safety guarantees and leaves footguns.743recommend
• TypeScriptAn expressive type system over JavaScript that catches bugs, shares code between frontend and backend and helps LLMs write better code, though escape hatches and compile-time-only types weaken its guarantees.574recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 731 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Ruby's FileUtils#sh (combined with %W{} array literals, %x{} output capturing and regular #{} string interpolation) provides a pretty low-impedance interface.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Humans missed 1 in 3 threats approving AI agent commands across 40k game runs”

2. Languages like ruby and python are not fast, but their syntax is so straight forward, the effort to go from a to z is a fraction of other languages

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"”

3. Ruby is the most elegant and expressive general purpose programming language that has reached a significant level of maturity and large audience.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Ruby for Good”

4. The language is still great as-is, but if there is no solution to lack of new developers, ruby will just follow perl's path to extinction.

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “RubyLLM: A single, beautiful Ruby framework for all major AI providers”

5. amenable to modern development practices and tools like source control and off the shelf text editors, and usable for Unix scripts

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby and Its Neighbors: Smalltalk”

6. Ruby is still a great programming language, but it really needs to intensify the effort to get out of the pit-of-decline.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Ruby for Good”

7. Ruby's syntax is pretty accessible and powerful and Matz was explicit about having developer happiness as a design goal.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?”

8. one of the most pleasant and elegant languages I've used… but the footguns it comes equipped with rival those of Perl.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby already solved my problem”

9. Python is generally slower, uses significant whitespace in its syntax, and lacks the metaprogramming features of Ruby

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ruby 4.0.0 Released”

10. The ability to cleanly remold any part of the system with minimal friction, to suit the app you're building right now

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Friendly attributes pattern in Ruby”

11. Type free languages like Lisp, Python and Ruby have faster software development times than languages that use types.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “T-Ruby is Ruby with syntax for types”

12. If our competitors voluntarily choose to use tools that are demonstrably less productive, that's great news for us.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Mruby: Ruby for Embedded Systems”

13. And one of the things I have enjoyed immensely - and I know I am not alone in this - is writing Ruby commercially

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Living in the Weimar Era of Ruby”

14. I feel like a damn genius when I write it, but want to pull my hair out when I have to read someone else's code

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “PHP 8.5”

15. I use it for prototyping, oneliners for ETL and to glue different moving parts in a system or network together

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby”

16. Ruby originally blew up because Rails was a way people enjoyed writing backend code, despite the speed issues.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Ruby for Good”

17. Ruby was the first language where I felt the joy of discovery more often than the frustration of cluelessness.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ruby 4.0.0 Released”

18. Ruby, and Ruby on Rails is a treasure trove of little handy bits you can use if you just know where to look.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby already solved my problem”

19. It is a joy to write Ruby, I'll give you that, but it is a pain to live around other people's Ruby at scale.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"”

20. The ruby code I write is about 1000000000x easier to understand, simpler and almost always shorter than C.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “The case against a C alternative (2022)”

21. I think ruby is a great language, I use it daily as the primary glue language to do literally everything.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “From Rust to Ruby”

22. I'd rather review, say, a ruby oneliner that extracts specific row values from a csv file with filter_map

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering”

23. This is a language that explicitly sacrifices important stuff like the strength of automatic checks possible and performance in lieu of developer ergonomics.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby”

24. the terse syntax combined with lack of static types and regular use of generated identifiers turns large codebases into Where's Wally

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby already solved my problem”

25. Everything being mutable by default, including strings, is about as big a foot gun as you can find in a high level language.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Ruby 4.0.0 Released”

26. Being able to open any class (or object) and add new methods to it makes tracking how execution works extremely difficult.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail”

27. See languages like Ruby or JavaScript, which are memory safe but not sandboxable due to all the monkeypatching they allow.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit”

28. Ruby is particularly magical with being able to evaluate methods from dynamic strings into running, production code

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “We should be more tired than the model”

29. I love Ruby and have built my career on it, but is it the right language to be starting new projects with given agentic coding?

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Ruby for Good”

30. Typescript, Kotlin, Python and Ruby (via Sorbet or DryStruct) are all really easy to write all those data structures and code.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code”

31. Ruby could have won, I like it more than Python, but outside of Japan it's also mostly been associated with web development

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?”

32. My only complaints about Ruby, as someone that never really did much with it, would be a more Smalltalk like dev experience

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"”

33. who deeply loves the language and who’s used it professionally and still uses it for virtually all of my personal projects

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Returning to Rails in 2026”

34. MRI - the main Ruby interpreter - is fast enough that competing against it with an unoptimized compiler goes really badly

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Compiling Ruby to machine language”

35. The software industry has suffered because people think Ruby isn’t the right choice and try to static type all things.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Optimizing Ruby Path Methods”

36. Ruby’s performance has not been a bottleneck for multiple companies that have IPO’d and are worth billions of dollars.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby already solved my problem”

37. Unfortunately the learning curve is quite high, you kinda have to know what you are doing from a language standpoint.

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Ruby already solved my problem”

38. The ruby community has made many performance improvements since 2.0, including JIT compilation, fibers and ractors.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Solid Queue 1.6.0 now supports fiber workers”

39. It's close, but there are some things that could be better to make it easier to access e.g. file size and type.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Stop Designing Languages. Write Libraries Instead (2016)”

40. Types in ruby are even worse than in python, because the type systems in use really make ruby turn very ugly.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Are you expected to run five Python type-checkers now?”