What are the things you would like improved in the Ruby language?

Question

What are the things you wish Ruby (and more generally the Ruby community) would improve?

I read somewhere that Ruby is the love-child of Smalltalk and LISP, with Miss P

Answer 1

Replace the Mixin system with a Traits system.

Answer 2

I wish people would consider backward compatibility between minor releases as an unbreakable rule when releasing a new language (or library or framework) version.

Answer 3

I'd appreciate being able to install ruby 1.9 as an RPM rather than having to use the source.

Answer 4

I would like to have support for static compile-time metaprogramming. The Converge Programming Language might be a good starting point.