AI-Powered Polyglot Programming: From Ruby-Only Dev to Multi-Lingual in Under a Year
A decade-long Ruby-only developer shares their journey of mastering multiple languages—C++, C, and Rust—in less than a year, thanks to AI coding tools like Cursor and Claude Code. The author details how AI assistance overcame the challenges of learning system programming languages, enabling efficient contributions to projects like Sorbet, RBS, and ZJIT. AI acted not as a code writer, but as a pair programmer with complementary skills, clarifying syntax, patterns, and answering questions, dramatically reducing the learning curve and enabling meaningful contributions from day one. While AI accelerates learning, human expertise remains crucial for course correction. The author believes AI-assisted programming is the future of software development.