Why Ruby is still sexy after all these years
It all started innocently enough in 2005. I was tired with my old girlfriend PHP and looking for a reason to breakup, but not wanting to break her heart.
I started looking around at other girls, and Ruby caught my eye sitting in the corner at a party I went to without PHP. She was sipping something that looked like red wine — where everyone else was doing a beer or something stronger. I searched for and found a bottle of Red Stripe beer and tried to catch her eye.
She looked calm. Approchable. I felt a certain confidence in going over to find out more about her. A confidence I never felt with Python, who had a long list of dealbreakers that I could not overcome.
I’d checked out Lisp before too, but she was that utterly beautiful hipster with the black hair, black lipstick, black nailpolish and thigh high black stockings (the ones with the holes in them). She was the manic pixie dream girl. And she lived in a place that I could not inhabit. Not to mention I was not her type.
After all, I’m just an ordinary man. A little overweight. Who still has his “needs”.
PHP was still good to me. Sure, I knew all her intimate spots that could make the earth move for her even on my worst days. But it seemed like every year she had all these new things on her list that I had to learn.
Worse yet, many of those things contradicted each other. Just when I learned how to tickle her “just so”. She told me that there was another, better, way. I asked her if the old way still did not get her off.
“Yes” she replied, “But check out this new technique over here!”
She was fast, able to fit in anywhere at the drop of a hat and had many friends. I even met her father Rasmus Lerdorf one day in New York City. Nice chap. Love him. I guess if I’d married PHP I’d be following up with him a lot more. And props to him — he knew I was in deep with his daughter (in more ways than one), but he was utterly cool with that.
Still, the grass seemed greener on the other side when I started getting know more about Ruby. We’d been on a few dates now after she gave me her address, invited me up for a nightcap and I tried her out for a little bit.
Lean, yet full of interesting curves that hinted at something great just under her full-lengh summer skirt. Everything was a class act. Things ran a little slower with Ruby. But I knew that everytime I went over there I got something accomplished and learned something new.
She spoke a different language, but in no time I started to understand it. Yes, a pidgin version of it at first. It was easy to learn, not unlike my high school sweetheart “C”.
I could understand Time. Learn to twirl her around on the dance floor. She had some complexity though, but everything was written down somewhere and If every I wanted to learn a new word I could just google it like “Ruby Enumerable”. Nothing could beat that.
There are still a few little things here and there that confuses me about her even to this day. But it’s more than made up by all the excellent clothing I can bring home for her at a moments notice. She’s taken to calling them her “gems”.
Ruby has literally been my partner in paying the bills, travelling around the world, building businesses. She’s remained faithful, is growing up and has become more powerful yet even more loving than before.
I’ve brought her with me to the office, on beaches, near the pool, in airplanes and introduced her to many of my friends and employees. And of course, in bed.
On this, our 11'th year anniversary, we’re still great lovers.
So when walking down the road hand in hand with her, I see Golang hurrying by. Her slim, lithe body wending its way through the crowd with impressive agility. My eyes follow Go and I hope Ruby is not noticing.
Elixir is coming down the sidewalk towards us. Wearing a kind of outfit that I’ve not seen before. A body like Ruby. Confident steps. Feet barely touching the ground.
She’s looking deep into my eyes — totally ignoring the fact that Ruby is by my side (the disrespect!). I look away hurriedly knowing that I may get lost in her if I’m not careful. This is the one person that might pull me away from Ruby. I hope I don’t see her again. It may be hard to resist.
Her friend Erlang giggles openly as they pass us by. “You almost had that one Lexy”, I hear as they slowly pass out of earshot.
And Java walks past us in a tight skirt, with an impossibly large ass. Little does she know that I don’t like large asses anyway.
I look down at Ruby — she senses my tension and my arm goes around her small waist. Even with the crowd all around us, I slip my hand downwards and take a long leisurely feel of her butt right there.
She looks up at me and smiles and we stop right there and kiss in the street. We’re blocking the sidewalk and everyone complains, but I don’t care.
Ericson Smith is the CTO of Travel Agency Tribes. He writes a lot of Ruby and is working on the next-generation Task management system for today’s distributed teams.
