In addition to the many great suggestions already made, here are two more: * Many things that you're used to thinking of as syntax are now just code. * For good (but subtle) reasons, you have to leave the '++' and '--' operators behind. You can still use '+=' and '-=', though. Although I understand the reasons for that last one, years of C, C++, Perl, and Java still lead me to try to use them in Ruby every now and then. ---Glenn