His major arguments seem to be that he doesn't like ruby's name.

My theory is if the author was in anyway correct in his assertions he wouldn't bother to write hit peices like this. He'd just move on.

The fact that people get stuff done in Ruby and that Ruby is constantly improving acts as a strong counter argument.

My first programming language was BASIC. My second programming language was assembly (for Z80A, then for 6502, later for x86). My third programming language, the one the author would call "formative" was Pascal.

None of these languages left me "imprinted" to the point of forever shaping my tastes and making me unable to adapt to or appreciate newer languages.

In fact, if we're talking about formative experiences, I remember one professor at the university who said, quite seriously, that "Anyone who has programmed in BASIC has been damaged for life and will never be a good programmer." The reason why that was a formative experience is that it taught me that people in which we put our trust can be assholes who ruin people's lives because they think some bit of dogmatic bullshit they came up with is clever.

And that's really what the article is about: the author wants to show off how clever they are. I'm okay with that, in general. I remember reading Steve Yegge's blog posts and finding them entertaining, regardless of whether I agreed with them. Thing is, Yegge had a lot more to say than just "look at how clever I am".

https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...