Hi,

|I was afraid of this answer. 

|I think, Ruby in its current state has everything that a language needs
|to programm comfortably. The only thing it could need is:
|performance.

Well, I know your intention.  But cool down.
I observe a symptom of "RCR syndrome".

When someone meets with Ruby for the first time, because it's very
close to his unseen ideal language, but lacks something, he can't
resist asking for adding that "lacked features" to make Ruby perfect
(from his point of view, of course).  I call this "Ruby Change Request
Syndrome".

It's pretty common among new users of Ruby.  Their requests (including
yours) are usually very insightful, because we all have different view
point, so they often enlighten me.  Nothing wrong with me.

The problem is:

because Ruby's good nature is standing on highly balanced hidden
philosophy/complexity, because I can't put them all in balanced
manner, sometimes (or most of the times) I have to say "no" or "wait"
for the requests.  I really hope they don't feel bad about this.

For your request for optional type system for hint to improve
performance, I don't say neither "yes" or "no", but "wait" and discuss
more deeply.  You can put it in RCR.  No one complains about good
performance, but I'm not sure whether or what kind of optinal type
system is worth it.  Since type system (and syntax change related with
it) is very very delicate topic (it affects the nature of whole
language, even if it's optional), it may take far longer than you
expected to reach to the conclusion.

							matz.