[pdkl95]

Ruby is a wonderful (and wonderfully powerful) language. Unfortunately, some of the popular ruby libraries (gems) are... problematic. To put it nicely. The web/rails gems in particular can be nasty minefields.

However, the language itself is great. The trick is to remember the usual advice that just because you can doesn't mean you should. Too many gems add "clever" metaprogramming (such as the def tricks in this article), when it isn't actually making the program simpler.

The beauty of ruby is that while it can act almost like a LISP for the times when you want powerful metaprogramming features, while also allowing simple shell or C style imperative code when that is more appropriate.

(Of course, some people fear that type of freedom... https://vimeo.com/17420638 )