Objects are also very specifically their own thing and of a specific class, so they are by no means undifferentiated. I agree a somewhat sharper split between

Objects are also very specifically their own thing and of a specific class, so they are by no means undifferentiated. I agree a somewhat sharper split between something like compile-time and runtime would be helpful, because it would allow some distinctions that are otherwise hard, but those are surprisingly few. There are absolutely challenges in optimizing Ruby, but I'd take those over a much more constrained language any day (some minor constraints would help; e.g. a "everything after this is runtime" marker would impose nearly no limits but would enable better tools)