I've been using irb for over 15 years as a REPL for executing Ruby code. It
has always been pretty plain in a lot of ways. For this reason, I often used
pry instead, especially in a Rails context.
irb has gotten notably better in recent years. I was delighted to recently
notice that earlier this year they landed delightful, colorful, and helpful
improvement to the welcome prompt.
It looks more or less like this:
❯ irb
⢀⡴⠊⢉⡟⢿ IRB v1.18.0 - Ruby 3.4.4
⣎⣀⣴⡋⡟⣻ "ls [object] -g pattern" to filter methods and properties
⣟⣼⣱⣽⣟⣾ ~/dev/jbranchaud/pool-league-pro
irb(main):001>
Notice it includes a random tip on the second line. I had no idea you could
include -g pattern with an ls, so that will likely be landing as a new TIL
soon.
This improved welcome message has been available since 1.18.0 and originated
in this PR.