Is Ruby a functional language?

Question

Wikipedia says Ruby is a functional language, but I\'m not convinced. Why or why not?

Answer 1

Whether a language is or is not a functional language is unimportant. Functional Programming is a thesis, best explained by Philip Wadler (The Essence of Functional Programming) and John Hughes (Why Functional Programming Matters).

A meaningful question is, 'How amenable is Ruby to achieving the thesis of functional programming?' The answer is 'very poorly'.

I gave a talk on this just recently. Here are the slides.