I was about to comment on something but when i read this:
>  What does Ruby gain from its syntactic quirks
I could not really continue.
It reminds me of the terminology "monkeypatching".
I dont really want to comment towards derogative terminology. (To me, a 
quirk implies something derogative. Same as monkey-patching implies to 
me as a "not good patch" that was applied under speed pressure, very 
quickly and without much thought etc but using a derogative term for it 
..).

>  I recognize that this is potentially a very "religious" question

I dont really think it is per se. But one maybe has to be careful
which words he uses. Unless that guy in question does not care
anyway maybe (mister "rails is a ghetto") :)

However, the python vs ruby comparison is, IMHO, really not such a
huge difference, because both share many goals. It is much more a
beneficial competition between the two.
With perl biting the dust (I could not resist ... ;>  )

One example - is that in speed comparisons, python outperforms ruby,
but I never understood why anyone who uses such "slow" languages
would care about speed anyway.

DSL is also a "difficult" term, because I have seen about 6 different
definitions of a DSL. It would be much better if people could all
agree about a DSL. And most importantly, if a DSL is a real language
*WITHIN* that language, or whether it is not.
-- 
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