Feature #12902: How about Enumerable#sum uses initial value rather than 0 as default? - Ruby master - Ruby Issue Tracking System

In https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12217#note-3, Akira Tanaka, mentions that the default argument to sum is 0. This creates problems with non-numeric summations (e.g. strings). I would like to suggest using the first enumerable value. This would make the method more flexible. It also makes it behave more like reduce. I think using the initial value in the enumerable is less surprising than using