Quoting Isaac Gouy <igouy / yahoo.com>:

> > But then Ruby showed people it was okay.
>
> Smalltalk?

That's where blocks came from, yes.  But Smalltalk never caught on,
at least not to the degree that Ruby has.

There isn't much unique to Ruby at all -- it's just very well
put-together, and has successfully popularized a lot of concepts
that have previously not been a significant part of "mainstream"
programming.

-mental