What I like about Ruby isn’t just the language, but that the community that surrounds this language tends to share these values.
There are lots of ideas that are non-controversial in principle, and lots of ideas that could work if people would just follow policy. Some people just accept those ideas, and communities form around those people. I'd love to hear someone explain how to make that happen. I'm sure it's like other communities, and there's a certain amount of envy involved. To some extent, people believe good things will happen when like-minded people collaborate. So I think that a screening process for the community is key. This goes back to something I noted when I was job-hunting about a 18 months ago - lots of companies will advertise that they're looking for people to work inside an agile process, but you don't find the typical tools used within that environment on the keyword list for the job opening. So it's not entirely off base to focus on technical aspects, because it's somewhat assumed that what is agreed upon, and the problem is how.