[petre]

Yup, I wrote smartcard reader programs in it. Some of them talk to a http server using async-http. It can be used for anything that Perl or Python is good at, well maybe except data science because Python really shines there. And irb is massively useful for everyday tasks.

[cempaka]

I wish I could reach for Kotlin as a kind of "Ruby with typing out of the box" but the lack of a good REPL is a real dealbreaker.

[Alifatisk]

You'll get Ruby with typings soon when rbs-inline is finalized

[cempaka]

Is that really something that's been slated to be added to the language proper? I attended RubyConf and in his keynote Matz seemed pretty opposed to adding types to Ruby source, and argued in favor of automatic typing instead.

[petre]

You can always use Crystal or Dart if you want builtin types. I like Ruby the way it is an trust Matz with his language design decisions.

[Alifatisk]

Crystal is the closest alternative to Ruby with types we have, even though they are semantically different and differ in some places. I do not see why you mentioned Dart as an alternative thought, it’s a totally different language.

[petre]

> Dart as an alternative thought, it’s a totally different language

Yes it's not Ruby but it has good design, optional type annotations.

[cempaka]

Yeah I actually did not necessarily mean to dispute Matz's perspective there. I actually think it will benefit programming as a whole if at least one widely used language takes the path of trying to eschew explicit type annotations.

[Sinjo]

Ooh, I hadn't heard of rbs-inline before. I was always a bit put off by the type definitions having to live in separate files.