I'm on the Maintainable Software Podcast with @robbyrussell —
https://maintainable.fm/episodes/noel-rappin-reviving-the-pickaxea-journey-through-rubys-legacy
It's always tricky for me to talk about the Pickaxe work, to balance the work I did with my admiration and respect for the previous versions of the book. I hope I did a good job of it.
The tagline they quoted me on in their Twitter post is “Well maintained software requires people to care about it”...
Went through a very big Douglas Hofstader phase in grad school, both this and the collection of his columns. Been a little afraid to revisit...
https://mstdn.social/@marick/113069682582684271
Also, also, I'm excited that Chime will be hosting the SF Bay Area Ruby Meetup on Oct 10...
I _think_ I'll be there and presenting, but it's not 100% certain yet.
Also, if you liked the static typing post (or think you'll like the next one...) and think you'd like to hear more in an interactive format…
I'll be doing a workshop at RubyConf this year called "No Static Types? No Problem?”.
More info at https://rubyconf.org/schedule/ -- I hope to see you there.
I'm currently writing the follow up to https://noelrappin.com/blog/2024/08/what-about-static-typing-in-ruby/
I'm almost talking myself into trying a hybrid approach where you don't static type the arguments to methods but you do type return values.
The idea here is that if you are running a “be open in what you accept" setup where you are coercing values anyway, setting a type on the result of the coercion gives you some tool benefit without loosing flexibility…
/1
New blog post / newsletter -- the one about static typing that I've been fighting with:
TL;DR:
* Static typing has value, but we overrate it because it so easy to see how it works in simple code
* In more complex code you need more powerful data validation anyway
* There's a cost to having to lock your code to types early
A quick reminder that Programming Ruby 3.3 — the Pickaxe Book is available
As an ebook: https://pragprog.com/titles/ruby5/programming-ruby-3-3-5th-edition/
From Amazon: https://amzn.to/3WESr4l
From Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/programming-ruby-3-2-the-pragmatic-programmers-guide-dave-thomas/19924522?ean=9781680509823
If you've already purchased the book and you want to help it get more reach, the best thing you can do is rate or review it at Amazon.
Thanks!