Misc #16047
Updated by Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme) over 4 years ago
The rationale for introducing `frozen_string_literal` was because rubyists were starting to litter their code with `"".freeze` for optimization, and it's ugly. But by using frozen_string_literal we introduce the opposite problem: we must litter the code with `"".dup` in order to have mutable strings, and it's ugly. The rationale for freezing all strings including dynamic was because it's [easy to explain] (https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1D0Eo5N7NE_unIySOKG9lVj_eyXf66BQPM4PKp7NvMyQ/pub) This may be true, but at the expense of making it cumbersome to use. And freezing dynamic strings is also completely useless (no-op) for memory optimization, but making it mutable again via `"foo #{bar}".dup` means we allocate two strings where only one was needed before. optimization. In my personal experience using frozen_string_literal, I find that static strings are usually ok to freeze without changing anything else, but that freezing dynamic strings often create bugs that require `+""` or `"".dup` boilerplate to circumvent. So in the end I found myself stopping regular use of that feature, since it's more trouble than it's worth. As such I'd like to ask other rubyists how has been their experience with **actually using** frozen_string_literal on a day-to-day basis; if my experience is unique or common. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.