My own opinion is that although Ruby allows string-like symbols (like :"symbol with space"), I think they should be avoided. There may be a case for them, but I've not encountered one yet.
The new syntax works only with conventional symbols (no quotes), not with any other key type, so no integers, strings, objects etc. For everything else, you can fall back to the original syntax. You can even mix then if you really feel the need (yech!)
That said, for almost all use cases hashes use symbols as keys, and for these cases the new syntax is much cleaner and I'm glad to see it
> That said, for almost all use cases hashes use symbols as keys
I'd say there are more vanilla symbol hash uses by number, but the most interesting and powerful things you can do with hashes don't involve symbols for keys, imho.
The new syntax works only with conventional symbols (no quotes), not with any other key type, so no integers, strings, objects etc. For everything else, you can fall back to the original syntax. You can even mix then if you really feel the need (yech!)
That said, for almost all use cases hashes use symbols as keys, and for these cases the new syntax is much cleaner and I'm glad to see it