Dynamic languages such as Ruby, Python, and JavaScript determine variable types at runtime instead of compile time. This flexibility allows for quicker development and concise code, but it can also make detecting certain bug classes before execution more challenging. Type checkers for dynamic languages provide structure and safety without sacrificing their expressiveness.
Sorbet is a static type checker created by the Stripe team specifically for Ruby. Sorbet arose from the need to handle the increasing complexity of Ruby applications in production, offering developers stronger assurances and more scalable code quality tools than dynamic typing alone.
Jake Zimmerman, a software engineer at Stripe, leads the development of Sorbet. He joins the podcast with Josh Goldberg to discuss his background, the challenges of typing in Ruby, Sorbet’s motivations, architecture, performance optimizations, and more.
Josh Goldberg is an independent full-time open source developer in the TypeScript ecosystem. He works on projects to help developers write better TypeScript easily, notably typescript-eslint, enabling ESLint and Prettier for TypeScript code. Josh frequently contributes to open-source projects like ESLint and TypeScript. He is a Microsoft MVP for developer technologies and the author of “Learning TypeScript” (O’Reilly), a valuable resource for those new to TypeScript beyond JavaScript. He regularly gives talks and workshops on TypeScript, static analysis, open source, and general web development.
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