[ladyrassilon]

Its a keyword, but its not needed (as its not needed in many modern languages) but many rubyists I've worked with said that it was a nice feature that the return keyword was unnecessary and did not use it.

[masklinn]

> but its not needed

Depends. It's needed for non-local returns (returning from within blocks), and it's also useful for early returns within methods.

It's not needed for the final return of a method, or a normal exit from a block (not a bad thing in my opinion, and Python's lambda do the same)