The interesting question that Opal brings to the forefront is to what degree do Rubyists, like myself, use Ruby for the exact toolset it provides (aka everythin

The interesting question that Opal brings to the forefront is to what degree do Rubyists, like myself, use Ruby for the exact toolset it provides (aka everything in the MRI, all the gems, Rails or Sinatra, etc.), or to a certain extent because of the syntax and design principles found in corelib/stdlib and third-party DSLs, etc. -- aka the "Ruby way". In my case, I've discovered that I love Ruby as a language/philosophy even more than I love Ruby as it's been precisely defined for the last couple of decades. And so, what that means is that "alternative" flavors of Ruby, like RubyMotion for native iOS and Android dev, and Opal for compile-to-JS scenarios like browser-based client-side development (or even Node.js-based development), are extremely appealing to me. I'm even interested in non-Ruby languages that are heavily influenced by Ruby such as Crystal. I should note at this point I'm pretty heavily invested in the Opal ecosystem (I'm the publisher of the http://www.opalist.co http://www.opalist.co newsletter for instance) and have shipped production apps that include real-world Opal code, so of course I want the project to be successful. But I came to that conclusion in part because I took a hard, hard look at the future of web development and decided I simply did not want a career as a Javascript programmer. Sure, I can write advanced, modular, well-crafted JS code. But can and want to are two different things. :)