Why Ruby? is a pretty damn good presentation. He talks about how the benefits include the culture, as well as the language.
The idea of making tools that are joyful to use to the programmers (wether it's the programming language, the editor, the SCM...) is something that appeals a lot to me, and it's something that (unfortunately) Perl lacks, basically due to it's syntax.
The community around the languages also affects, both have a great community around with hundreds of incredibly smart people with it's own quirkinesses, but the Ruby quirkinesses are more appealing to me (think DHH or _why) than Perl's (think Larry Wall or all the JAPH/golf...).
Though the Ruby community managed somehow to drive off _why and someone like Zed Shaw if I remember correctly. If that really appeals to you...
if I remember correctly
No matter which of those reasons it was, it's pretty baseless to claim that he took down all of his websites, comics and open source software in a variety of languages including one he created due to some mysterious, unmentioned, irreconcilable beef the Ruby community, especially considering he was one of the most influentual people in defining that community.
>> "The idea of making tools that are joyful to use to the programmers ... basically due to it's syntax."
Thats pretty much entirely "who is working in this language" based imo. As for syntax being a limitation, its interesting you complain that, because others have complained that the syntax is too dynamic, too augmentable, and too unpredictable, hence people talking stuff about it being impossible to write a parser for it =).
Granted, often when this feature is used, its often abused, and there are various 'source filters' in Acme:: you'd get shot if you tried using them in production ( Switch.pm is one such shootable offsense ... with great power comes ... extra unwanted side effects ).
But an example of a Good use of the source filter/metaprogramming nature intrinsic to Perl is MooseX::Declare ( its only part source filter, but its "Sane" because its smart enough to not cause too many unwanted side effects ) to provide alternative class declaration syntax, that some would claim, even looks readable!.
use 5.010;
use MooseX::Declare;
class Foo {
method hello( $what ){
say "Hello $what";
}
}
Foo->new()->hello("World"); # Hellow World\n