You get something in exchange to that overhead: 1) predictability 2) static analysis 3) quality (static typeing vs. duck typing) 4) sophistication/maturity 5)

You get something in exchange to that overhead: 1) predictability 2) static analysis 3) quality (static typeing vs. duck typing) 4) sophistication/maturity 5) reproducabilty 6) tooling All that's not always necessary, but if you know the thing you're building has a shelf life of at least 2 years then ruby/rake are pretty shitty tools.