I really like what Matz has to say, not just about Ruby but about programming and design. I have found many "gems" in your conversations with Matz. Thank You

Favorite quote:
"'Be lazy. Machines should serve human beings. Often programmers serve machines unconsciously. Let machines serve you. Do everything you can to allow yourself to be lazy.'"
and
"I work very eagerly to be lazy."
Those quotes are going up in Computer Science lab when I get back to school. I shared the latter joke with a non-programmer and it didn't make sense to him... I guess you have to think a certain way for that sentence to not seem contradictory.

I've been reading the Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide for the past couple of days. Ruby is really a joy to learn, looks like it will be fun to work with as well. It appears to be perhaps a little over concise (I like code that documents itself... I'm already thinking about how I'm going to have to explicitly comment what all the objects and method arguments do given all the roles they can take in Ruby, not entirely a bad thing). I think its use of passing blocks to functions, while not new to Ruby, is its most unique feature. Due to its easy syntax I can see myself using it routinely, whereas with other languages I use it only when I'm forced to (like telling a button what to do in Java by sending an anonymous class).