Ruby: Distinctions

• More familiar syntax than Smalltalk (being envisioned as a better Perl)

• More readable than Perl due to design philosophy, less punctuation (closer to natural language), natively OO, comes with actual exception handling

  • Uses Lisp-influenced iterators more than standard for/foreach loops

• Python tends towards the explicit; Ruby tends towards terse idioms

• Much less verbose than Java, and is interpreted rather than compiled