HEF> Better to whisper the truth than to 
HEF> condemn a falsehood at the top of your
HEF> voice...

Maybe. I guess the following is obvious, but in case not:

It is always nice to have a lot of wood (i.e. great classes/modules in
use in production environments) behind the tools you use. It is always
nice to work in a language that lots of other projects are written in,
so you can be up to speed on the language part of the problem. Then
again... it is always nice to have a secret weapon... :-)

HEF> Cheers,
HEF> Hal

-joe

P.S.  It is *always* nice to have a smart and friendly community of
peers, and Ruby has that in spades.