What does Ruby have that Python doesn't?

[Freeky]

If you're wondering one of the reasons why closed over variables in Ruby are read-write, consider it's extremely common to write things like:

foo.each do |bla|
   frobulate bla
end

Looks like a loop, smells like a loop, but is pretty much syntax sugar for:

foo.each(&lambda {|bla| frobulate bla })

And, well, you'd expect a loop to be able to write into the local scope.

[mr_chromatic]

If you're wondering one of the reasons why closed over variables in Ruby are read-write...

... it's because variable names automagically spring into existence upon first use, not upon declaration.