It's blindingly obvious to me that Ruby's basically "put smalltalk and perl in a blender with a tab of good acid" (and I mean that as a compliment).
The main reasons I bounced off ruby and stayed with perl were
- variables popping into existence on first assignment
- lack of block based scoping (i.e. perl's 'my', or ES6 'let')
- the OO model is ... restrictive ... and trickier to bend [1]
- less amenable to syntax plugins (e.g. you can implement async/await as a library in perl, not so much in other things)
I'd note that Elixir kinda manages to steal good parts from both ruby -and- perl and I find it much more comfortable.
Also that other than the two scoping related ones, my complaint mostly boils down to "can't bend the language in insane ways" and it's fair to think that letting people do that is more trouble than it's worth.
(i.e. please take this comment in a spirit of being why -I- ended up still preferring perl, rather than a claim that anybody else should ... but after 'let' in lisp and 'my' in perl, I'm spoiled for any scoping model that doesn't do that ;)
[1] single inheritance would be survivable if it had based itself on a trait-based smalltalk but modules are ... not really enough, and the achievable aesthetics when building stuff on top yourself aren't quite my thing ... this is my fuzziest claim and you're welcome to file it under 'personal taste'
The main reasons I bounced off ruby and stayed with perl were
- variables popping into existence on first assignment
- lack of block based scoping (i.e. perl's 'my', or ES6 'let')
- the OO model is ... restrictive ... and trickier to bend [1]
- less amenable to syntax plugins (e.g. you can implement async/await as a library in perl, not so much in other things)
I'd note that Elixir kinda manages to steal good parts from both ruby -and- perl and I find it much more comfortable.
Also that other than the two scoping related ones, my complaint mostly boils down to "can't bend the language in insane ways" and it's fair to think that letting people do that is more trouble than it's worth.
(i.e. please take this comment in a spirit of being why -I- ended up still preferring perl, rather than a claim that anybody else should ... but after 'let' in lisp and 'my' in perl, I'm spoiled for any scoping model that doesn't do that ;)
[1] single inheritance would be survivable if it had based itself on a trait-based smalltalk but modules are ... not really enough, and the achievable aesthetics when building stuff on top yourself aren't quite my thing ... this is my fuzziest claim and you're welcome to file it under 'personal taste'