Smalltalk was the second major influence on Ruby's design. A different kind of influence, since almost nothing of Smalltalk's syntax made into Ruby. But many of the details of how objects work are directly inspired by Smalltalk, including the idea that every piece of data is part of the object system.

This week I wound up trying to put together a sample “real-world” problem suitable for use in an automated web thing aimed at potential new hires. Of course, any actual “real-world” problem would be have too many extraneous details to make it suitable given the constraints of the web thing,...

### Top Story and Book Update I have sample cover designs. I don't think I can show them yet, but I've got 'em, I like them, and hopefully we'll have picked one to show shortly. ### Tab dump Not a whole lot today: Here's a look at the current status...