Several years ago, a new proposal made the rounds in the Ruby community. “Refinements” were proposed as a way to modify an existing class, but without the unfortunate (and potentially dangerous) side effects of monkey patching. The Ruby community discussed and debated refinements, and when they were finally included in Ruby … well, it seems that almost nothing happened, because no one really used them. In this talk, James Adam asks why no one is using them. He describes refinements, and then points to reasons why they might be interesting and/or useful, and then discusses why they aren’t in common use.