Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Ruby is anything but simple. It has one of the most complicated syntaxes of any programming language in common use.

Perl and C++ are still in the lead, but with stuff like the gratuitous introduction of alternate hash syntax, new-style lambdas, etc., Ruby is catching up.

Ruby's grammar is complex, but it's object model is incredibly simple.

Introduction of a new hash syntax wasn't gratuitous really. I think the point was to make up for the lack of proper keyword arguments. Now that they're available, it's true that it doesn't have a reason to stand on its own, but it does make the code more readable and concise, as does the stabby lambda syntax. Though I do agree with your point on simplicity really, the language does offer way too many ways to do the same thing sometimes.

It'll never catch C++ [1]

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23980929/what-changes-int...