RBS, Ruby’s new type signature language

I haven't used Ruby in ages but this seems like a really odd way to incorporate type hints in the language.

I much prefer the Python 3+ approach of type annotations in source code.

I can't imagine having to look at a separate file just to figure out what the type of something is. You may say "tooling will fix this" but it's just far less overhead for everyone at the end of the day to just make annotations in source.

My more existential question is, is there really an advantage to doing static type checking in Ruby?

When I was doing Ruby, the way you can change objects on the fly, add methods on the fly, the vast amounts of metaprogramming, are types at "compile" (I know, not really) time really the same as types at runtime?

Like, it might be nice to get some autocomplete, but AFAIK tools already do that (RubyMine, others).

This is why I do not like mypy or types in Python other than dataclasses. If I'm going to type the damn thing I better be getting performance ala cython. Why on earth use a dynamic language like Ruby or Python and then try to bolt types on top. Ruby would do far better to fix the bloody `and` vs `&&` issue (it should just be `and` and it should work like `&&`) and strings should be immutable by default with a special syntax or method to make them immutable.

But you're absolutely right about the downsides of stuffing types into a different file. I get why Matz did it (he wants to keep Ruby beautiful and types are crufty) but I don't like them in the first place.