Well, first of all, you aren't reading the Ruby source to understand Rails' idiosyncrasies, you're reading the Ruby source to understand Ruby's idiosyncrasies a

Well, first of all, you aren't reading the Ruby source to understand Rails' idiosyncrasies, you're reading the Ruby source to understand Ruby's idiosyncrasies applied to Rails. Secondly, this article is far more verbose than necessary when compared to the succinct 5-paragraph explanation provided by David Flanagan in "The Ruby Programming Language" p. 69-70 [1] It's great that you took a chance to dive into the source of Ruby. Nonetheless, it's times like these when I wish people would understand that the best way to learn a programming language is by example AND by documentation (whether official docs or books). Those that ONLY learn by example fail to understand or unlock the true power of a language until it's too late. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177 http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanag...