You could make the case. To me, Ruby looks like a strange hybrid of Python, SmallTalk, and Perl.

This makes Ruby sound far more attractive than it really is to me.

What would you change about it?

Well, when I hear that something is a mix of a bunch of other things, I tend to picture the best about those things.

So if Ruby had:

    * The clarity of Python
    * As well as the batteries-includedness of Python
    * With the flexibility of Perl
    * As well as a library managed as well as CPAN
    * With the tooling of Smalltalk
    * But without the weird VM business

Then Ruby would be much more attractive to me. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Ruby, it's a fine language. I'm just saying that I hear those three things and I picture some sort of uber-language.

I find python's clarity lacking in comparison to ruby, at least in terms of making classes and iterators. Why are all those underscores really necessary?

No mention on your other points here because I either agree or don't have an experienced opinion on the matter.

Speed

Ruby is Smalltalk with Perl syntax.