Looking back on Ruby, the language is interesting. From an outside point of view it looks a bit clumsy sometimes -- for example @var constructs. There's also a lot of room for confusing syntax -- or better worded flexible syntax which can generate confusing code. One example is the fact that you can call a method without using parentheses. Pretty cool at first. If you come from any other language that means that at first your see a construct such as blah.foo and you don't know if foo is a member, a method, a variable, etc. Ruby's point is that the difference is moot. I don't quite buy it as we're dealing with procedural languages which work by generating side effects so you want to know when side effects occur -- and Ruby's answer to that is that foo! generates a side effect but foo should not. Well it may be.

In the end it's all a matter of conventions: learn the possible syntax and then decide what works for you and try to be consistent about it.

The libraries are also important and there are plenty around so they are not an issue.

Eventually maintenance in the long term is what matters. I'll see how it works. Python, with its ugly need to write self.foo all other the place, is at least very predictible and so far when coming back to an old Python scripts aeons later I had no trouble remembering how it worked and I could dive right in. I'm not quite sure about Ruby in this context, as even to remember some basics I had to look at other code I wrote 6 month ago and needed to open the book to remember the @var thing. However Python is too verbose to do shell scripting whereas Ruby can be as consise and cryptic, err I meant efficient, as one wants it too be.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm won't go as far as claim that Ruby is an acceptable LISP yet I'll claim that Ruby is good enough.