[djur]

ObjectSpace isn't really a major issue. JRuby disables (most of) it by default for performance reasons and I've never had to turn it on for any real code.

Ruby has been a major source of improvements in software, especially tooling and web development, over the last 10 years. A lot of the newer languages have borrowed concepts popularized by Ruby (gem-style package management; bundler-style dependency management; same-language build tools like rake; rails and sinatra-esque web frameworks). And a lot of tooling for other languages has been written in Ruby (sometimes later replaced by same-language tools). I'd compare the role Ruby has played to Perl in the '90s.

I certainly hope Ruby doesn't go down Perl's path. It may be protected from that fate by two differences. First, there's no Perl 6-like project to distract attention and effort from the actively used version. Second, Ruby remains by far the best general-purpose language out there for those of us who like Smalltalk-style OO languages (everything an object, message passing, extreme late binding).

I too would really like to see Swift escape the Apple ecosystem, for a number of reasons, even though I'm unlikely to use it myself.