Charles Nutter does a good job of explaining why you can't just ignore refinements: http://blog.headius.com/2012/11/refining-ruby.html http://blog.headius.com/2

Charles Nutter does a good job of explaining why you can't just ignore refinements: http://blog.headius.com/2012/11/refining-ruby.html http://blog.headius.com/2012/11/refining-ruby.html In summary, they makes the Ruby language harder to implement, and Ruby code harder to understand. You can't pretend they don't exist if their existence compromises the meaning of your code and the performance of your chosen Ruby implementation.