> I always get tempted to switch to Ruby * whenever i remember that Matz intended to make programmers happy. However, I don't think i'd feel comfortable with a

> I always get tempted to switch to Ruby * whenever i remember that Matz intended to make programmers happy. However, I don't think i'd feel comfortable with a language that only allows object-oriented programming, and moreover OOP of the old way (a method must be tied to only one object. This is what prevents me from going to Smalltalk, btw.) That's a pretty strange stance. OOP is around and alive, and with the prudent addition of functional constructs, you get the best of both worlds. To me, the deal breaker about a language is static typing: if the language is dynamically typed (like Ruby, Python and Smalltalk), it's a non starter.