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Lowtype: Elegant Types in Ruby codeberg.org

graypeggan hour ago

It's not always a good thing, but I love Ruby's ability to define new runtime-valid syntax that looks pretty much native to Ruby itself.

    def method(thing: String | "default value")

the pipe operator seems to be defined here, as just a regular method: https://codeberg.org/Iow/type/src/commit/aaa079bf3dd2ac6b471... the type gets picked out by the module included in the class you want typechecked, which reads the default value from all methods (which is the "real" ruby syntax here, where `thing` is assigned a default value of the result of calling `String | "default value"`) and uses that for type checking.

I like that over-flexibility... it's regularly too clever and makes it difficult to follow the flow of an application, but I like it all the same.

ryukoposting36 minutes ago

Mixed feelings here. Type annotations are a thing Ruby lacks, that other languages have, that I like using in other languages. Ergo, I'd like to have them in Ruby, right?

My knee-jerk reaction is "yes I'd like that" but when I pause to think about how I actually write Ruby code... hmm. I tend to use Ruby when its flexible syntax and type system are helpful. How much would I actually benefit from something that restricts the flexibility of the type system?

Bear in mind, I'm not a "Ruby dev" per se. It's a well-loved tool in my mostly firmware-focused repetoire. I use it for little CLI tools, and toy game engines too (mri embeds into C really cleanly). Fun little things that most folks would use Python for, I just like Ruby better.

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