[blacktriangle]

As somebody who loved Ruby, THEN got into Rails, and now really hates Rails, I've made an intentional effort to not to have a meaningful opinion about Ruby itself until I have a good year between me and any rails work. Rails just infects ruby with so many terrible ideas. I suspect going back to pure ruby I won't feel the same way, as I've now reached a point where I see the whole "everything is an object!" design is a huge fail, but that aside I could see rediscovering the fun in the expressiveness of straight ruby code.

But yes, it really is a shame that Rails seems more parasitic on Ruby than not and hasn't lead to a larger general purpose Ruby community.