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Also, he says (pers. comm.) he's going to write an article for his blog stating that APT will not be integrated with Gem. Quote from e-mail: "That approach has many problems. We are working on solutions, but they don't involve calling gem from dpkg scripts."

...at least, in that Matz releases a new version at Christmas each year. For example, here's his Christmas post from Dec 2004 for Ruby 1.8.2. Way back when!

You probably want to use the Ruby documentation at noobkit.com, and gem server for your more obscure RubyGems.

In general, I'm not really happy with any of the Ruby sites, because Rdoc is missing some important features, making it really difficult to determine what files to include when you want a certain functionality. I have described this problem and what I feel the solution should be at ruby-talk:295589 but nobody's done anything about it AFAIK.

Sort of... not totally stand-alone in the traditional binary executable sense. You still need the Ruby interpreter.

But several tools (Ruby2EXE, ExeRb) allow you to bundle your program, libraries, and the Ruby interpreter into an executable that you can then distribute. I've used them in the past and they work well -- never had any users tell me they couldn't install the program.

There are various options available for a GUI. I've used wxRuby a lot. It's an interface to the WxWindows/WxWidgets toolkit. I think it works very well, and I really like it's auto-layout features using sizers, although the API is very C++-like.

Another toolkit that people use a bunch is fxruby, which interfaces with the Fox toolkit.

There are lots more GUIs. Take a look at the Ruby App Archive or lurk on the mailing lists to see what toolkits people are using (or just ask them).

This: ` is a backtick. It is neither an apostrophe: ' nor an opening single quote: ‘.

If you're really going to be typographically correct, you should use LDQUO and RDQUO entities “like this” or LSQUO and RSQUO entities ‘like this’.

It doesn't look "distinct", it looks like a UNIX nerd never realised that the world stopped being an xterm in about 1996.

If you're displaying HTML, use entities. If you're displaying plain text, use typewriter quotes. Anything else is typographical bollocks.

Some reading for you, that you may become enlightened:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ ruby-talk/3010

I didn't realize Python supported closures. Can the closure variables be modified or are they read only?

You can't modify them. That's a deliberate decision based on Python design principles (see here for a discussion). Personally, I disagree with the decision because I consider the consequences unintuitive, but it isn't worth worrying about it because it's not a big issue in practice: Python has much less need for them because it supports bound methods, iterators, and comprehensions, and when you really need a modifiable location in the enclosing scope, it's still easy to express. (If you want to talk language cleanliness, I think Python makes up for that wart relative to CL just by treating functions and closures consistently as values alone.)

Also, using 'def' in a Python function sounds identical to using FLET or LABELS in a CL function. Of course in CL you can also just use LAMBDA.

Yes; I would argue, however, that the Python syntax is a bit more natural. Scheme implementations also often support nested DEFINEs.

Also, could you define more than one local 'def' function and return them all? Could they access the same closure variables?

Yes, but you really want to use a class in that case.

Here is how to get started:
Extending Ruby
That is from the 1rst edition, I recommend getting the 2nd.
Also take a look at the README.EXT (come with the ruby source code).

Here are some helpful links (a bit more advanced):
Ruby Source Code Browser
Ruby C API Docs
GC And Extensions
Ruby Talk

I must admit the learning curve for C extensions is a bit steap if you don't have experiance in either language. Also more tutorials are needed.

-Charlie

I would counter a few of your underlying assumptions with the following references - note that electron tunneling pathways affect protein folding dynamics and that quantum interference plays a critical role in photosynthesis. See also Zeilinger's biomolecule matter-wave interference experiments.

Of course, future computing architectures can incorporate these 'spooky' features.

According to OSNews, another KDE developer has announced the Rubydium JIT.

It is a threat: ugly and dangerous.

He has later retracted his statement, but it is not positive.

And this post sums up what Ruby thinks of Bruce :-)