honest question. for someone who already know scala and groovy (moving from java), what is the selling point of ruby? esp in regards to (1) its syntax (2) its library and ecosystem and (3) its performance
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(1) Syntax wise Ruby is a lot easier and more expressive than Scala. IMHO I feel that Ruby is an OO language with some functional sprinkles while Scala is a functional language with OO sprinkles.
(2) Ruby has a great ecosystem if you are building web apps. It's also got a lot of testing libraries. :) But in seriousness the number of libraries in non web/tooling space is slowly increasing as faster Ruby implementations have become a focus point. Also JRuby allows you use the vast ecosystem of Java from within JRuby.
(3) Performance wise I'm pretty sure Scala will outperform Ruby. I don't think JRuby will be able to compete either. Charles Nutter, JRuby Core developer wrote this blog post which explains why Ruby is hard to optimize ― http://blog.headius.com/2012/10/so-you-want-to-optimize-ruby...
Of course take everything I've said with a bag of salt! :)
Ruby's a top ten language -- neither Scala nor Groovy are anywhere near it -- so the ecosystem's much bigger. If we need JVM libraries, we can use JRuby without changing any source.
Admittedly, Scala's performance is faster because it's statically compiled, while Groovy's syntax is more standard, i.e. closer to C/C++/Java/C#/Javascript/etc. So wrt (1), Groovy, (2), Ruby, and (3), Scala.
adding answer to my own question: with Ruby(Motion) you can make native iOS apps, and it's 20% off http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4732827 (just saw it in frontpage)