I'm not a Ruby programmer but have over the course of my career had numerous occasions where I had to look at "incredibly readable" Ruby code. No, no it isn't.

I'm not a Ruby programmer but have over the course of my career had numerous occasions where I had to look at "incredibly readable" Ruby code. No, no it isn't. Sure, you can infer some meaning in the various "DSLs" without knowing any Ruby but you're left facing exactly the problems of ambiguity the GP pointed out. You know what the words mean because they're just English words but you don't know their exact definitions in that specific context. And even if two "DSLs" use some of the same vocabulary that doesn't mean the words will mean exactly the same thing. It's just hiding the arbitrary implementation behind a very ambiguous API that might read as two completely different things to two different readers. Let alone trying to manipulate the program (at which point you realise that even though it's supposedly a "DSL for laypeople" you still need to understand Ruby idiosyncrasies to be able to work with it). Ruby is not incredibly readable. Ruby is however capable of letting you create APIs that make code look a lot like plain English language. That doesn't mean the code "reads" like plain English language because unlike plain English language it's just a bunch of whimsical function and variable names with arbitrary implementations.