Simon Willison’s Weblog

What are the main weaknesses of Ruby as a programming language?

15th October 2010

My answer to What are the main weaknesses of Ruby as a programming language? on Quora

Ruby still has a cultural tendency towards monkey-patching, aka action-at-a-distance. There are plenty of gems which modify existing classes—sometimes in ways that can break working code.

Posted 15th October 2010 at 9:17 am · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything - 19th May 2026
The last six months in LLMs in five minutes - 19th May 2026
Notes on the xAI/Anthropic data center deal - 7th May 2026

This is What are the main weaknesses of Ruby as a programming language? by Simon Willison, posted on 15th October 2010.

programming 158 programming-languages 42 ruby 74 software-engineering 62 quora 1005

Next: Is there any consensus yet on link rel=shorturl vs rev=canonical?

Previous: What are the best websites for finding out about events in San Francisco in advance, i.e., before they take place?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe