Symbols are not pretty strings

Symbols are one of the basic features of Ruby that give it that certain charm we all love. They aren't unique to Ruby (look at Smalltalk or Lisp), but they are a fundamental piece of the language. I'm not going to review what symbols are in this article since there are plenty of other explanations a short google away. However, I do want to say a few words about what I consider a common misuse of symbols.

The way I see it, symbols are great for naming things in your code, but bad for using as domain data. Over the last year or so I've seen a growing number of cases where symbols are used as an alternate syntax for plain old strings. I guess some people like to see :thing instead of "thing" in their code. Well, I don't like it. Sure you get to save a character, but at what cost? Won't somebody think of the children?