Here's a longer article (http://codon.com/consider-static-typing http://codon.com/consider-static-typing) with more background / history about static typing and

Here's a longer article (http://codon.com/consider-static-typing http://codon.com/consider-static-typing) with more background / history about static typing and Ruby. This topic has been knocked around in Ruby-land for a while; I remember seeing Michael Edgar's LASER (https://github.com/michaeledgar/laser https://github.com/michaeledgar/laser) static analysis tool including some work around optional type annotations, but seems like development there has stopped.