JBjbackus·Sep 10, 2020
Ruby's parser is notoriously complex; if I remember correctly, only a few members of the core team even know how to maintain it without introducing regressions.
The craziest part of this is that Ruby does not provide a full featured Ruby parser, so its entire static and dynamic analysis ecosystem depends on a (actually very high quality) 3rd party parser, begrudgingly maintained by someone who (AFAIK) doesn't even write Ruby anymore: https://github.com/whitequark/parser
When I see new language features like this, I think of how Ruby's entire tooling ecosystem depends on the dramatically underfunded (and therefore primarily goodwill) efforts of high output maintainers like whitequark and a few others. Ruby's highly dynamic and untyped nature means these tools are all the non-runtime guarantees you can get, basically. Epitome of digital inf
Read the rest
rastructure.
Consider asking your company to fund some of these people:
* https://github.com/whitequark (maintains parser)
* https://github.com/sponsors/bbatsov (maintains RuboCop)
* https://github.com/sponsors/mbj (maintains unparser and mutant)
---
As context, I know this stuff intimately because I used to contribute heavily to most static and dynamic analysis tools in the Ruby ecosystem (https://github.com/backus?tab=overview&from=2017-12-01&to=20...) and used to track new ruby changes really closely: https://cognitohq.com/new-features-in-ruby-2-4/