I can't answer for others, but IMO, Ruby is the most elegant and expressive general purpose programming language that has reached a significant level of maturit

I can't answer for others, but IMO, Ruby is the most elegant and expressive general purpose programming language that has reached a significant level of maturity and large audience. If you write Ruby for a few years, and then you "go back" to other languages, you will groan. That's not to say that some other languages do not have things that we wish Ruby had, but often those other things would not really fit well with Ruby. Nothing is perfect from every angle. But writing Ruby can be a joy for some of us.