Preston Crawford wrote:
> So I'm wondering, for what reasons should I consider learning Ruby? I'm a 
> "Big Book" type of guy. I love buying one of those tree-killers and diving 
> into a new language. I'm trying to decide whether my next language to 

It seems that the 'pickaxe' is for you. You can get it at: 
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.html

It's up to date (covers Ruby 1.8.x) and really really well written.
It has a 'tutorial style' part as well as a reference to the Ruby 
standard library.

> learn will be Ruby or Python. I already know a bit about what makes Python 
> good. So my question to you guys is, why Ruby? 

These are my reasons:
- The community is friendly, helpful and open minded
- It's easy to learn
- For me it works well on both 'unixoide' OSes and Windows
- It's readable code with out much 'noise' (semicolons,
   parentheses...)
- It doesn't enforce one single program layout (indentation,
   parentheses...)
- There's 'test/unit', YAML, RedCloth, Rails (you mentioned it),
   RDoc, ri and oh-so-many useful (and easy to use too) libs etc.
- A lot of Design Patterns are 'built in' or easy to realize
   (Visitor, Observer, Delegator...)
- It's a very dynamic language
- It's fun to work with
- I get things done right in a short time (among other things
   thanks to 'test/unit')
- It fits my way of thinking


> Also, do any of you have a feeling as to the future of Ruby? I know these 
> things can change on a dime, but my main interest in this regard is that I 
> know many shops are considering non-web-based Open Source solutions to 
> replacing existing Visual C++ and VB applications. Acting as an oracle 
> (i.e. taking a guess :-) ) what kind of future do you think Ruby has in 
> this regard?

Good question. I don't think Ruby will replace any of the 
extremely-wide-spread languages any time soon. And I don't mind. In 
fact, I think an extremely larger Ruby community would (at least) tend 
to be less kind, less helpful and less responsive.

Happy rubying

Stephan