Issue #17859 has been updated by rubyFeedback (robert heiler). I don't have a strong opinion on the topic. I am fine either way. Both seem to have a valid point of view, e. g. the "it is convenient" approach. This is kind of true. But, as said, I don't really have any particularly strong pro or con on it, be it a change, or no change. I wanted to comment on two other statements, though: (1) The "it may be slow". Well, one could focus on a "bare irb" or "base irb" behaviour, such as zverok showed (e. g. "python which loads instantaneously, has no syntax highlight, and very simplistic autocomplete"). People could modify the behaviour via irbrc and load add-ons. I once even loaded all my local gems by also using Thread.new {} for loading them, since some took some time, and I thought I could just "insta-start" irb, and type commands, while background loading could proceed. It did not seem to work quite in the way how I thought it would be, so I switched to a "minimal IRB" again, where I really just start the things I need on a daily basis, and load other things only when I need it. I don't know whether irb is slow or not compared to python startup, but I feel that this question can be approached, even if it is just a mini-irb with less functionality. The main question should be whether it is worth to change the default behaviour, e. g. if more newcomers would think this is better, than typing a separate command (e. g. irb). That should be the primary question, the other questions are secondary to that one, I would think. (2) In regards to the "war", let's call it rather a "difference in approach" (irb versus pry). The way how I see it irb adopted what seemed useful from pry, even before the later rewrite that took place, without necessarily going the full introspection route that pry adopted from the get go. So I see these two more as a separate projects really, but irb learning from pry more than pry would learn from irb (since it has a slightly different use case). I don't think this is a bad thing. If anyone remembers, there was a time we did not have BasicObject, and if memory serves me well _why was important in suggesting it, as he was testing an interactive ruby on a website, and there having some "vanilla state" seemed important (probably also with SAFETY or what old security checks were still in place, to get it to work in a browser; of course since then we can do so; I think there is a project on github that does that, hsbt contributed to it if I remember correctly, but I forgot the name of that project). ---------------------------------------- Feature #17859: Start IRB when running just `ruby` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17859#change-102006 * Author: deivid (David Rodríguez) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal ---------------------------------------- Compare python: ``` $ python Python 3.8.3 (default, Jul 8 2020, 16:49:12) [GCC 7.5.0] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

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To ruby:

$ ruby # just hangs ``` I think firing up a console it's a good default behaviour for beginners. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/