David Heinemeier Hansson graced us by uttering:
[ snippage ]
> 2. "Mac OS X Server now supports Ruby, a simple and powerful
> object-oriented programming language along the veins of Perl"
> 
> Not bad at all. Well, besides being lumped in with Perl,
> perhaps :)

I've never understood why some Rubyists despise their Perl roots
so much.

I observed much ridicule of Perl in the c.l.py newsgroup where
Perl represented the antithesis of the language in question.  In
fact, among the newer generation of interpreted languages, Perl
seems to be the bastard stepchild whom everyone belittles.  It
has appeared to me on several occasions that it's almost a rite
of passage for one to make fun of Perl's syntax in order to be
accepted into the "cool" clique.

That may be all well and good for Pythonistas, but Ruby borrows
heavily from Perl, and makes no attempt to hide it.  Aside from
the rather obvious inclusion of dozens of special variables, the
ruby executable also largely functions identically to perl,
taking many of the same options and switches.  Finally, much of
the grammar of Ruby, especially where regular expressions are
concerned, are obviously in the spirit of Perl.

Assuming that much of the above would never have become part of
Ruby if there weren't significant worth and utility in it, why
then do we lower ourselves to the petty jokes of our peers and
find ourselves condemning our own heritage?

To liken this to natural languages, isn't this much like the
French condemning Latin for it's foolish practice of conjugation?

Pensively,
Tim Hammerquist
-- 
There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make
the parser more complex.  I do, occasionally, struggle feebly
against complexity...  :-)
    -- Larry Wall in <7886 / jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>

Why do language designers persist in thinking that simple
languages produce simple solutions?  All it does is sweep the
complexity of the problem under someone else's carpet.
    -- Larry Wall in <199911300903.BAA26153 / kiev.wall.org>

It's the Magic that counts.
    -- Larry Wall on Perl's apparent ugliness