Smalltalk and Lisp are both well-designed languages, whereas Java's not.

How can one effectively argue against an entirely subjective judgment of difficulty in terms of dealing with a type system?

Anecdotally, I find that leveraging functional language programming features coupled with type inference and polymorphism leads to considerable productivity gains as code correctness can be ensured through judicious use of types -- without requiring extensive testing or programmer effort -- while excess verbosity can be eliminated through the use of FP features such as type-safe anonymous functions, currying, etc.

I find monkeypatching happens because the framework doesn't utilize proper baseline OO techniques. By "baseline" I'm excluding mixins. I have rarely found a case where mixins do a better job over well factored inheritance. I don't think mixins are "evil". Just over utilized and inheritance heavily underutilized in Ruby.

You're lucky that in those cases you were able to recover in only two days. The time it takes to get back on track can be proportional to the size of the project so imagine if you were dealing with an enterprise system written in and monkey patched in Ruby and you had a similar problem. Depending on your luck, you might get back on track or you might end up having a lot of extra time to work on your resume.

I'm not the parent but I'll reply anyway.

I have very few issues with Ruby as a language, in general it let's me get from thought to working code quicker than any other language I've used. Honestly the largest issues I've run into with Ruby typically deal with people trying to be too clever.

Ruby certainly provides a lot of ways for people who want to look incredibly clever to hang themselves and anyone using their code. I typically avoid libraries or frameworks where clever code is the norm (I'm looking at you Rails), and because of this I tend not to have too many problems.

It's certainly not perfect, and I've been frustrated by bad error messages, stupid type system mistakes, etc. But I've found that those issues simply replace issues in other languages.

I still feel that Ruby gets me from Thought to Code quicker, and for the kind of projects I typically do, that's worth dodging a couple of warts.

I love Ruby. I love that code can be so short and yet easily readable. It might be slower and perhaps more memory-hungry than other languages, but for my needs that's usually not an issue.

What I do miss are good, well documented, stable libraries. For example, I currently process RSS/Atom feeds with FeedTools, whose own creator says he's tired of maintaining (I totally understand him and am extremely thankful for the time he put into it). I assume if there were more people coding Ruby, there would be a better chance someone would step up and take his place. So, having a community that is more welcoming to newcomers would eventually benefit us all.

By "open to newcomers" I don't mean that Ruby-celebs should stop posting snarky comments at each other in their blogs. This is pretty negilible. I mean stuff like having better documentation, for example, online, free, in googleable format (rather than screencasts or print books). IMHO PHP3 annotated online docs back in 1999 were significantly more usable than what Rails has to offer now.

Best thing I learned today. Thanks.

"I don't see where Ruby syntax is particularly more concise than C# 3's."

1.upto(10).each{|x| print x}

I'm curious - how would you print 1 through 10 in C# 3 by comparison?

  (1).UpTo(10).ForEach(x => Console.WriteLine(x));

  public static class IntExtensions {
      public static List<int> UpTo(this int start, int end) {
          var range = new List<int>();
          for(int i = start; i < end; i++) {
              range.Add(i);
          }
          return range;
      }
  }

  def print[T] (value:T) = System.out.println(value)
  1.until(10).foreach(x => print x)

  // Declare a structural type for any class implementing close()
  type Closable = {def close(): Any}
  
  // Executes the provided function with the given
  // closable generator, creating a new instance which
  // will then be closed on completion. The provided
  // function's value will be returned.
  def withClosable[T, C <: Closable] (c: => C) (f: (C) => T) = {
    val closable = c
    try {
      f(closable)
    } finally {
      closable.close
    }
  }
  
  // Example usage
  def usage = {
    val updated = withClosable(db.openConnection) { conn =>
      conn.update("INSERT INTO example VALUES (...")
    }
    System.out.println("Rows updated: " + updated)
  }

    1 to 10 foreach println

    for i in range(1,11): print i

  for x in range(1, 10): print x

I, for one, thought that the popularization of the "Fuck Apache" mindset was one the most positive results of Rails' ascendancy.

I don't like Rails, but I hate Apache.

I'm not qualified to respond to your points about Phusion and mongrel but on the previous point about the size of the community, are you also finding as a result that the job market for Ruby positions is sparse (forgetting about the economy for a second)? That's the impression I have from the job boards but you work in the field so maybe you have a better idea.

Every nit picked is valuable :)

Yes, but we all know that Ruby is the haven of Devils!!