This level of cuteness and obsession with syntax is partly what drives me away from Ruby. A function should just be a function. We don't need to make programming languages look more like English. There are certainly issues with other languages and their verbosity (like with Java). But I don't want to have more ways to do the same thing and worry about how poetic my code reads as English - we should worry how poetic it reads as computer code.

That said, we don't need just one programming language. Perhaps Ruby is easier to learn for those new to programming and we should introduce it to students.

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stonecharioteer a day ago | parent [-]

I think Ruby teaches a sense of style, but I'm not sure that style carries over to other languages. Python was my primary language for 12 years but I'm disappointed in the depth of Knowledge python Devs have. Most barely understand the language or try to. Ruby seems to coax people into coding into a ruby way. I like that.

	▲	teaearlgraycold 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> but I'm disappointed in the depth of Knowledge python Devs have Not super relevant, but my favorite fun fact about Python (specifically CPython) is that hash(x) where x is an int is always the value of the int - except for -1, because the underlying C function uses -1 to represent errors. So hash(-1) == -2, which means you have a hash collision right around 0 where hash(-1) == hash(-2)