I can’t imagine thinking the opposite either. People are different. Matz’s attempts at backwards compatibility in Ruby 3, particularly wrt typing haven’t been kind to its more elegant origins, but ‘dumpster fire’ is baffling to me. Some people do like php , though, so 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yeah, I’ve tried out Crystal. I like it, I think it’s got a lot of potential. I like the improved performance, and the concurrency model. The community and ecosystem isn’t as strong, though. If I had to pick one right more, it would still be Ruby! I love Elixir too, for different reasons. It’s a completely different language, but with a similar style.
I had a look at Mirah back in the day. It’s like Ruby, with stronger, more static typing, that is designed-in better than Ruby’s bolted on typing additions.

Ruby. It’s designed for developer happiness, and it’s beautiful. Not as beautiful as it once was, but still lovely to code in.