Ruby used to annoy me simply by existing. I first heard about Ruby years ago, in maybe 1997 or 1998, and folks said it was kind of like Perl, but "cleaner", whatever that meant. Ruby fans back then seemed like a tiny minority of rebels and fringe separatists.Steve ...'s home page.
Ruby irked me primarily because we already had Perl, which was working just fine thank you very much. And if for some strange reason you didn't like Perl, we had Python. If Perl fans were dog owners, and Python fans were cat owners, then Ruby fans seemed like ferret owners. They could go on and on about how much they adored their beady-eyed albino stretch-limo rats, and how cute they were, but we all knew they were just looking for attention. Nobody really wants a pet rat. (Ferret owners will correct me and say they're not rodents; they're more closely related to weasels and skunks. As if that helps.) Regardless, I didn't want to have anything to do with Ruby.
Last year, though, I was looking at a bunch of different languages in the hopes of finding one to replace Perl for small- to medium-sized tasks. One day my magic Perl dust had worn off rather suddenly, and I'd joined the growing ranks of people who were beginning to notice the emperor was a wee bit underdressed. But all the alternatives to Perl looked pretty bad themselves, and I started judging languages by how far I'd get into the reference manual before throwing it across the room.
I eventually picked up a Ruby book -- ...
I personally keep loving both of them. I can afford that in the comp.lang.* area and in some others as well, but that doesn't concern my girl-friend, of course.
I actually came across Steve, when I searched for elisp.
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