Is Ruby easier to learn than Java, since there appears to be less code to write?

there are much more things than keystrokes that we need to consider

Still, this is an interesting question. The lines of code may be less, yet the method and variable names may be much longer. There are at times many ways to do things, yet the language reads very english sentence-like. The language is focused on developers, not on compilers.

Is Ruby your first OO language? Was Java? (just curious).

I've found Ruby to meet my language expectations better, have a lower barrier-to-entry, and read a lot nicer (than Java).

I've also found they syntax of Ruby to be a bit more Perl-ish that I'd hoped for, though because I enjoy using the language so much - I'll give it that concession.

If that's true (and -knowing very little about Ruby- I have no way of knowing) then I'd say that Ruby code might be harder to read since the code density should be higher for the same functionality.

Of course, these days IDEs make the task of typing/writing the actual characters that make up the code easier, so from that perspective there may not be much difference.