I have to agree. I am also mainly a Python programmer who had dabbled a bit in Ruby, but in the above examples, Ruby is definitely nicer.

I mentioned some of the reasons I stuck with Python here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1941594

Where _language_ is concerned, I think Ruby is every bit as nice as Python if not nicer.

I think the point of Python's horrible syntax is to make operator overloading so painful that you're less likely to abuse it (cough C++ cough Haskell). Either that or Guido really likes underscores.

It's part of the point. The idea being that when you're doing operator overloading or metaclass hacking there's a simple, easy visual guide.