Well, when I hear that something is a mix of a bunch of other things, I tend to picture the best about those things.

So if Ruby had:

    * The clarity of Python
    * As well as the batteries-includedness of Python
    * With the flexibility of Perl
    * As well as a library managed as well as CPAN
    * With the tooling of Smalltalk
    * But without the weird VM business

Then Ruby would be much more attractive to me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Ruby, it's a fine language. I'm just saying that I hear those three things and I picture some sort of uber-language.

Speed