Ruby revelation

I just wrote this letter to Paul Holser, a buddy of mine at ThoughtWorks. It explains pretty well the excitement I feel coming from Ruby:

I'm doing my best. I smell the Ruby-bean coffee brewing, and my caffeine cravings are kicking mighty hard.

I am (was) an expert in C++. But I long ago passed the 80/20 mark. To get more ooph out of C++, I became a template metaprogramming wizard. But the reward/effort ratio was low.

Then I became an export in Java. But again I have passed the 80/20 mark and am (was) exploring annotations and aspects to get more bang for the buck. Again the reward/effort ratio is too low.

So now I have a shiny new toy in front of me, Ruby. This is so much more fun than trying to squeeze those last few MPG out of my other programming engines.

Know what I mean, Earl?

Right now are those heady, young days again like when I first learned about programming and why the meta-thinking I enjoyed in college was actually useful. Shine on!