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Interesting interviews, and a few nuggets of insight from language designers who've shaped the modern software industry, even if their language(s) are not mainstream/in wide use.

Worth a read, but don't expect to be held spellbound throughout, as it's pretty dry in places.

Would have been better with more story & background.

Every Ruby developer should read this book, if only to learn some of the depths of what is possible in the language, and how the ideas from different paradigms (OO, message-passing, FP) can come together with such power.

The book is conversational in tone, and the idea of "spells" discussed throughout provide helpful mnemonics to recognize the concepts in the wild later.

I read this after attempting to write Rails plugins; a lot of what seemed quite unusual to me (or sensible, if a bit quirky) now makes a lot of sense.