May 23, 2026
Rubish or rubbish? The comments erupt
Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby
Ruby fans found a new shell, but the comments turned into a name-joke war
TLDR: Rubish is a new command-line shell built in Ruby that promises to run existing bash scripts while adding Ruby-style commands and shortcuts. The community mostly turned the launch into a chaotic mix of name jokes, prank accusations, and a mini fight over whether its Ruby-style command chaining is clever or cursed.
A new project called Rubish says it can act like the familiar Unix command line people already use, while also letting them drop Ruby code straight into their scripts. In plain English: it wants to be your everyday terminal, but with Ruby’s extra tricks mixed in. That’s a big promise, and the creator is going all in, saying old bash scripts should work unchanged and any failure should be treated like a bug.
But let’s be honest: the real spectacle was the community reaction. The very first wave of chatter was not about features, speed, or compatibility — it was about the name. Multiple people immediately admitted they read it as “rubbish,” and instead of hurting the launch, that somehow made it even more memorable. One commenter flat-out crowned it “the best name to the application,” while another joked this had “Good April 1 article” energy, basically asking if the whole thing was a prank.
Then came the classic nerd-food-fight. One camp was intrigued by the idea of writing command-line tasks in a more Ruby-flavored style. Another camp recoiled at the sight of replacing the humble pipe symbol with method chaining, with one bluntly saying they “much prefer the pipe.” And of course, no programming language thread is complete without a speed argument: Ruby got dragged into the eternal performance discourse, with one commenter helpfully reminding everyone that yes, people call Ruby slow — but also claiming it now beats Python. So the vibe was clear: part curiosity, part side-eye, part name-based meme explosion.
Key Points
- •Rubish is presented as a Unix shell written in pure Ruby that compiles shell syntax into Ruby code for execution on the Ruby VM.
- •The project claims full Bash compatibility and says existing Bash scripts should run without modification.
- •Rubish adds deep Ruby integration, allowing shell commands and Ruby code to be mixed in the same scripts and interactive sessions.
- •The article documents installation through Homebrew on macOS and from source using Git and Bundler, plus a `bin/rubish` launcher that auto-detects Ruby.
- •Features beyond Bash include Ruby-based conditions, method-call command syntax, method chaining pipelines, iterator blocks, inline Ruby evaluation, literals, lambdas, and Ruby-style function definitions.