Compared to most everything (PHP is probably worse, and there might some that I don't know). I'm not saying it's surprising because it's different, rather it's

Compared to most everything (PHP is probably worse, and there might some that I don't know). I'm not saying it's surprising because it's different, rather it's surprising because it doesn't seem to be very internally consistent. Lots of complicated rules instead of a few simple ones. As I pointed out in another comment, the way lookup is handled for instance is really a clusterfuck (http://norswap.com/ruby-lookups-scopes/ http://norswap.com/ruby-lookups-scopes/) Other OO languages like Java or Smalltalk (the more direct Ruby inspiration) do much better in this regard of having simple rules for lookup (and other things).