The only difficulty in Ruby code is the block notation. Even then, it is very similar to constructs in JavaScript, Go, D and a number of other languages -- the only difference form JS would be that instead of `(x) => ...` you write `{ |x| ... }`.

Questions such as

> why does it not have parentheses around it but the `", "` passed to `join` does?

would be exactly the same for JavaScript, Go or D. Ruby has the best syntax with regards to blocks/lambdas/closures.