That is not a good metaphor for anything, really: no-one was enlightened; at best some reddit-grade snark was conveyed.

I worked with Ruby for two years. The metaphor is apt when considering software development as an engineering discipline. It was certainly not meant as snark. You disagree, that's fine.

Not really sure what you think I disagree with, since the metaphor is so vague and wishy-washy it could apply to anything from theology to stamp collecting, but it sounds like trying to conflate late binding with some manner of bad coding style.

Well, since I have been privileged to work with several really great Ruby teams over the last couple of decades, whose large and well-structured code uses metaprogramming techniques yet remains easy to follow & comprehend (and debug and extend), and who remain splendidly productive to boot, I can say, if this bunch of guesses at the intended meaning of that "soap bubble" metaphor hold water, then yeah, I disagree.

Conversely, shitty code can be (and is) written in explicit import and early-bound languages. The enterprise world, for example, is riddled with massive hairballs of brittle, unmaintainable, boilerplate-heavy Java.

All of which only goes to show that people, not the programming language, are the problem.