MDmdavidn·May 24, 2026
Compiler errors help the chatbot find and fix problems. The equivalent in Ruby, RBS, isn't as widely adopted. Type annotations being in separate files is also inconvenient.
https://github.com/ruby/rbs
In Ruby for Goodruby
rbs
Ruby2020–2026
ruby / rbs
rbs
The type signature language for Ruby
14Distinct people
15Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The type signature language for Ruby
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year15 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-07-29 19:28:28 UTC to 2026-05-24 17:21:09 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
15 sourcesThat's just documentation tool but the method is actually already statically typed by ruby.
I'm not sure why they don't link that in the documenation but I beleive it is something the RDoc mainer wants to do.
def lines: (?string? separator, ?chomp: boolish) -> Array[String]
| (?string? separator, ?chomp: boolish) { (String line) -> void } -> self
https://github.com/ruby/rbs/blob/master/core/string.rbs
In Do I not like Ruby anymore? (2024)Ruby has static type system built into the language.
https://github.com/ruby/rbs
There are others you can use if you like.
In Ruby on Rails Audit CompleteAh that's a shame. I was hoping it would work via sidecar files like Ruby's RBS [1] or Python's stub files [2]
I was editing my comment during your reply, and added this:
> or maybe https://github.com/teal-language/tl#loading-teal-code-from-l... this is the easier way to do it. `require` and use `loader` during development, generate the Lua once things are somewhat stable.
Does that sound like the right idea then?
[1] https://github.com/ruby/rbs
[2] https://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/stubs.html
In Teal – A statically-typed dialect of LuaRuby's static type checker is built into the language, since 3.0.
https://github.com/ruby/rbs
You can use others if you like. I have used Crystal before, pretty quickly realized that it was never going to catch up with Ruby and the compile step isn't really all that much of an advantage. The few scripts that I want speed for, I just use mruby. Embed Ruby in C, runs super fast. Don't get all the cool Ruby libs or runtime reflection. But a way better tradeoff.
https://mruby.org/
In Pike – a dynamic programming language with a syntax similar to Java and CYou are correct technically, but the implication that you must sacrifice speed or static typing is practically incorrect: faster on startup than .NET [0]. You can get benefits similar to static typing in for a while now [1].
[0] tested locally on a Linux environment
[1] https://github.com/ruby/rbs#readme
In Implementing a simple object system from scratch in Rubyhttps://github.com/ruby/rbs
is the "officially supported" one. It's terrible, as is Sorbet. No offense to anyone involved with either of the projects, they just miss the mark in pretty fundamental ways.
In Rewrite it in RailsI saw no mention of RBS+Steep, the latter providing a LSP. I use it a lot and very much like it, although it's still young and needs love, but it's making good, steady progress! I've been very pleasantly surprised by some of the crazy things Steep can catch, completely statically!
You appear to be working on projects with Sorbet (which I tried to like but found it fell short in practice, notably outside of the app use case i.e it's mostly useless when authoring a gem) so it may be a tall order to try on those. Maybe you can give RBS+Steep a shot on some small project?
RBS: https://github.com/ruby/rbs
RBS collection (for those gems that don't ship RBS signatures in `sig`, integrates with bundler): https://github.com/ruby/gem_rbs_collection
Steep: https://github.com/soutaro/steep
VS Code: https://github.com/soutaro/steep-vscode
Sublime Text
Read the rest
: https://github.com/sublimelsp/LSP
Vim (I'm working on it): https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale/pull/4671
I don't know what you mean by "Static typing is not webscale".
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39159481
Bugs exist in all code written in all programming languages and you will find bugs in programs written in statically typed languages too as you know. Programming languages are rarely chosen for the absense of bugs alone though or we'd all be using SPARK Ada or something.
> spitting out code as fast as your keyboard works, or is is not having features do weirdo things
This is a straw man. No-one has suggested that "spitting out code as fast as your keyboard works" is what Rails allows you to do, or that Ruby code results in features that "do weirdo things".
In reality engineer productivity is important and Rails enables it in a web environment.
> I have more than once tried to contribute fixes to GitLab's codebase, and every time
Read the rest
I open the thing in RubyMine it hurpdurps having no earthly idea where symbols come from or what completions are legal in any given context.
Yes, I prefer writing statically typed languages and I would /greatly/ prefer Ruby to be statically typed for a number of reasons, but it will likely never be so in a way I consider to be usable (see https://github.com/ruby/rbs). Not being able to definitively tell what a method returns or where one is defined is a total PITA, but it's one of the array of up and downsides to Ruby, with each language having a different set.
> I trust JetBrains analysis deeply, so if they can't deduce what's going on, then it must take an impressive amount of glucose to memorize every single surface area one needs to implement a feature.
You don't need to know how all of Rails works to write a Rails app, as I'm sure you know, so this seems like another mis-representation of the truth, just as you don't need to know how the compiler or CPUs work to do a lot of (most?) programming.
> That or, hear me out, maybe "it works on my machine" is a close to correct as the language is going to get without explicit type hints as a pseudo static typing
You seem to be suggesting that Ruby on Rails applications behave unpredictably on a machine to machine basis but that's not really how Ruby works in practice, or matching on my experience.
Are you familiar with rbs (https://github.com/ruby/rbs)? If so, what issues do you see with using that over TypeScript?
In Rich Kilmer on the Power of Ruby (2007)RBS (https://github.com/ruby/rbs) + Sorbet (https://sorbet.org) in Ruby 3!
In Building GitHub with Ruby on RailsRuby does have optional type annotations, if you want them:
https://github.com/ruby/rbs
In Ruby 3.2’s YJIT is Production-ReadyRuby 3 supports type signatures: https://github.com/ruby/rbs
In Crystal for RubyistsDidn’t see it linked in the preview announcement, here’s the RBS syntax guide: https://github.com/ruby/rbs/blob/master/docs/syntax.md
Glanced at it from my phone but it looks good! I’m looking forward to seeing it in RubyMine. Still sad that we can’t write these in .rb files but I wonder if the plan is to go the other way, eventually permit typed code in .rbs?
Does anyone know what the story will be with third-party definitions? Are we headed towards a DefinitelyTyped style repository for Ruby?
In Ruby 3.0 Preview 1It's worth noting that while the article is coming from Square, this is an official Ruby project and is "Ruby 3’s new language for type signatures".
https://github.com/ruby/rbs
In RBS, Ruby’s new type signature language