EDIT: I realize I left out my main point: I definitely agree with several of the points in the article. I have long wished for some way to traverse ObjectSpace

EDIT: I realize I left out my main point: I definitely agree with several of the points in the article. I have long wished for some way to traverse ObjectSpace easily and to know what code is being actually executed at any point in time. Lack of use of or availablity of comprehensive static analysis tools in our programming today is a huge problem, IMO. </end edit> I don't have much experience with Ruby debuggers, as I rarely use them. I do use RubyMine, every day. It's got powerful inspections and is an incredibly valuable tool for me. But, I originally used IDEA many years ago, and I don't think that RubyMine is anywhere near as powerful, because of all the dynamism inherent in Ruby. I personally think that Ruby is far too flexible a language. I use metaprogramming, monkey patching, and `method_missing` exceedingly sparingly, if at all. I try to never make code any less traceable than possible. But, I use Rails, and while I don't dive into the Rails source very often, I'm sure there's a lot of hidden stuff in there. All sorts of methods added to classes (ActiveSupport - inflections, time zone helpers, ... - and all the core extensions that have made their ways into gems that do not even require ActiveSupport), and all of my URL helpers which use method_missing to "define methods" that never existed. In a word, Ruby's dangerous (and can be made to be very hard to reason about). I have been watching http://crystal-lang.org/ http://crystal-lang.org/ every once in a while. I think one of the core strengths of Ruby is how concise and elegant it is or at least can be, and how readable it is or at least can be. It's pretty damn nice in a lot of ways. The community support is of course incredible as well (https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide is great, http://slim-lang.com/ http://slim-lang.com/ has made markup a non-arduous task, etc). Maybe we can do better. EDIT: Incidentally: a lot of my complaints about Ruby are things that I would say about JS as well, but I have considerably less experience there. I just know that I've half-learned sooo many JS patterns. While I don't know Python, one of the things I've really liked hearing about it is how there's supposed to be "one right way" to do stuff. I think this is good. Code serves a purpose, it's a functional tool - IMO, it's not like written language where you really need a bunch of similar-but-different ways to get the same meaning across.