Things I hate about Ruby

• If you reference a string with a numeric index, you get back the "numeric value" of the character at that location rather than the character itself. On the other hand, if you use an index and a range, you'll get back a string.
• There is a difference between the .. (two dots) operator and the ... (three dots) operator. Gee, how could anybody *possibly* get those confused.
• The common integer class is called Fixnum. You use the method to_i convert to a Fixnum (which is a descendant of Integer)
• The << operator is one of the options for string concatenation (along with +, the .concat method, or just putting two strings next to each other)
• (1..25) === 14 is not the same as 14 === (1..25)
• The convention is supposed to be that methods ending in a '?' return a boolean - true or false. Yet, the .infinite? method returns one of nil, 1 or -1
• The case of a variable name has bearing on what that variable is used for. For example, a variable starting with a capital letter means that it is a (so called) constant (see next item).
• Constants aren't. Supposedly, any variable beginning with a capital letter is a "constant". Except you can change the value. Not quite sure how that makes them a constant. Even Math::PI is mutable.
• Makes things unnecessarily flexible. Example: You can reference an array element as elem[index] or as elem.at(index). Or if you have a string variable "blat", both blat.length and blat.size do the same thing. Why? What benefit is this?
• Ruby takes one of my least favorite pages from Perl's playbook and doesn't require parenthesis around arguments to a function/method call. So you can write things like a = Array.new 12 rather than the far more readable a = Array.new(12)
• Another Perlism I've never been fond of, whatever the last "value in a method" is, is also used as the return value. There is a return statement, but it is not required.
• Uses sigils to indicate instance/class variables instead of using the more common nomenclature of self.var or this.var or classname.var
• If you define a class twice, the second definition adds to the first rather than replacing it. Example:

  class Hello
  	def say_hi
  		puts "Hi!"
  	end
  
  end
  
  class Hello
  	def boo
  		puts "Boo!"
  	end
  end
  
  hi = Hello.new
  hi.say_hi
  hi.boo

• You *must* use getter and setter methods to access instance vars from outside the instance.
• Classes bother to have the ideas of public/private/protected, but only for methods. Not for data members / instance variables.
• (From a coworker): A script will run in the interactive 'irb' shell, but barfs using 'ruby <script>'
• (From a coworker): !nil does not equal true, but, !!!nil does
• (From a coworker): "and" and "or" behave differently than "&&" and "||", so much so that general rule is "don't use 'and' or 'or', use '&&' and '||'"