At the DevLink codecamp, in Murfreesboro TN, I met a developer before the keynote, Corey Haines. He started explaining some things about how Ruby was a language that was going to change the developer experience, and then proceeded to demonstrate a very simple app that he got up and running in minutes - a web site application.
I attended the meeting where the Open Spaces were being planned and session on how Ruby was affecting the profession (or something like that) was proposed as a subject. I was curious - twice within a few hours - this topic had appeared.
I was standing in front of the OpenSpaces board later, and discussing the subjects with people who were standing around, and when I mentioned the Ruby discussion that was going to happen, two older individuals - who seemed like Managerial types chimed in that they have seen that developers can be very productive with Ruby. OK - that is three times before lunch and the subject of Ruby has been put in front of me - this is getting to be a bit ridiculous - so - my curiosity is growing.
The Ruby Language - is not used at my employer today (that I know of). The main impression that I got was that the productivity using Ruby can be an order of magnitude more than what other languages offer. This was a set of information that will take me a while to digest and experiment with.
I have downloaded IronRuby and got some learning materials to go through. I can see that the roots of Perl are in some of this. It will take some time with all the things I have going on right now.
The little I have read indicated that both Python and Perl were not sufficient for the developer of Ruby, and that is how the language got its start. The breadth of technical areas that the books I got shows that this is a maturing language - I am sure that there will be more to say later as I have digested a bit of what I am learning.
Here are the books I got to become familiar with Ruby