Ruby is basically Perl 5, only the language has less syntax and is much more regular (so much so as to manage to make closures feel natural even to Java wussies), has clean and out-of-the-box-useful OO; but there is no CPAN for it.

If I were to start over learning dynamic languages now, I would quite probably pick Ruby over Perl 5 – but I stick around because I already know Perl 5 very well, and Ruby doesn’t offer substantially more expressiveness and power.

Ruby also has the advantage of being fresh and getting hyped right now, so might be an easier sell than the “crufty” and “write-only” (etc yadda yadda) Perl 5.

Makeshifts last the longest.