- Despite the opinion clearly being unpopular here, I stand by it: the ruby community is toxic-at-best, and totally technogically uninteresting.
Individual Ruby developers may be very nice people, but that doesn't make the technology any more notable or novel, and doesn't change the general tenor of the Ruby community, which seems to be driven by larger than life personalities and a general lack of solid applied computer science.
But I also want to respond to the somewhat more interesting portions of your argument - is ruby "technically interesting", "notable", "novel", and/or lacking in "solid applied computer science", and to what extent do those things matter? I think it is technically interesting because you can do much with little, notable because it combines the elegant OO of Smalltalk and the weak functional programming of Lisp with an intuitive syntax reminiscent of though dissimilar to Python, not at all novel because it prefers to embrace good ideas from its predecessors, and quite thankfully lacking in leakage of hard computer science into mundane programs. It is wrong for many jobs, but right for many others, and for that it is interesting. It is one of a multitude of languages for which the same can be said.
2) Pure command-line interface that works with text files, that makes it work easily with any toolchain. Seems that GNU Smalltalk is the first version which only recently did not require an IDE.
3) All the basic and most useful objects are literals. Enumerators are stupid-easy to use.
4) Much lower learning curve than Smalltalk.
5) Adopts some useful Perlisms into the language mix.
6) A large focus on unit testing, and TDD. And they are very easy to use.
I don't think many here are arguing that Ruby is particularly interesting technology-wise. Amongst languages, well, it isn't particularly. But the baseless FUD about the "culture" or the "community" is unnecessary.
Its driven from the top, largely because most mature programmers that would provide a counter to community immaturity have no reason or need to use Ruby.
Things like "the [whatever] community is toxic-at-best" or "I don't relish the notion of [whatever] culture" are opinions that in Ruby's case are based on the behavior of a minority. It's like if people say all C developers are "fat bearded men." Quite a few are, but it's an unhelpful generalization.
If the Ruby community had a general atmosphere or a policy of encouraging sexist or unprofessional behavior, I'd let these remarks slide. But it doesn't. The articles and rants that make it to HN are usually the controversial parts because that's more likely to get votes on social voting sites like HN, alas.
And unsurprisingly, Linux is a terrible overall example of quality kernel development and design.
> If the Ruby community had a general atmosphere or a policy of encouraging sexist or unprofessional behavior, I'd let these remarks slide. But it doesn't.
Except that the only times I've ever had to deal with (or hear of, third-hand) a general atmosphere of sexist, unprofessional behavior in technology has been in relation to the startup community in general, and the Ruby community in particular.
Programming is becoming a huge part of everyone's lives. Languages that ease the learning of CS and lower the barriers to entry are very welcome. And some of them also happen to be great business tools.