Originally published on Medium:
https://medium.com/@deepan.ppgit/ruby-4-has-landed-and-its-bringing-gifts-3bf2159dfe89
Ruby 4 just dropped 💎
And it feels like Ruby went through a glow-up phase — sharper reflexes, warmer personality, but still cozy on the inside ☕✨
This release isn’t just a version bump — it’s Ruby saying:
“We care about performance, isolation, and developer joy.”
Let’s unwrap the highlights 🎁
📦 Ruby Box — Taming the Sandbox
Ever wish you could trap that one rogue gem patch without breaking everything?
Ruby Box is an experimental new feature in Ruby 4 that lets you sandbox code, patches, and definitions into isolated environments.
Think less global chaos… more controlled magic.
⚡ ZJIT — A JIT With Energy (And Espresso)
Ruby 4 introduces ZJIT, a new just-in-time compiler powered by Rust underneath.
Is it a speed demon yet?
Not entirely — but it’s definitely a step toward a faster Ruby without losing its essence.
It’s like giving Ruby a strong cup of espresso — performance feels more awake ☕⚡
🪢 Ractor Gets Stronger
Ruby has improved Ractor, its concurrency model, to make parallelism more useful and less awkward.
Expect:
- Better message passing
- Easier sharing of
Procobjects - Fewer “wait what?” moments
Parallel Ruby is slowly becoming more real 🚀
✨ Language Enhancements That Just Feel Nice
Some subtle but delightful updates include:
- Cleaner handling of
*nil - Logical operators (
&&,||) behaving more predictably - Better flow readability overall
These aren’t headline grabbers — they’re joy creators.
🧱 Core Class Upgrades
Ruby 4 also sharpens classic core classes:
-
Setis now part of core — no morerequire "set"🎉 -
Arraygets faster and friendlier helpers - Unicode upgrades make string handling and emojis feel smoother
📦 RubyGems & Bundler 4
Bundler and RubyGems get nice upgrades too:
- Faster native gem builds
- Better parallel installs
- Flexible lockfile handling
Basically:
bundle install now hurts less.
🚧 Heads-Up
Ruby 4 trims some old, deprecated APIs and cleans up legacy quirks.
Good for code health — but do check test suites and dependencies before upgrading production.
💜 Final Thoughts
Ruby 4 feels like Ruby grew up without losing its soul.
It’s like Ruby hit the gym and learned Rust
but still shows up with hot chai and good vibes 🍵💎
Now go forth:
bundle install
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