If you mean in function calls, I always put parenthesis because it's always easier to read. If you mean in conditions (if, while) I only put parenthesis when they're necessary.
I leave them out when I'm doing DSL-ish stuff, like t.column or has_many in rails. The rest of the time, it generally comes down to clarity, and it's probably an even split.
Ruby allows you to leave out parenthesis, in general, resist this
temptation.
Parenthesis make the code easier to
follow. General Ruby style is to use
them, except in the following cases:
Always leave out empty parentheses
The parentheses can be left out of a single command that is surrounded by
ERb delimiters -- the ERb markers make
sure the code is still readable
A line that is a single command and a single simple argument can be
written without the parenthesis.
Personally, I find that I do this less
and less, but it's still perfectly
readable. I tend not to like single
lines in regular ruby code that have
multiple arguments and no parentheses.
A lot of Ruby-based Domain Specific Languages (such as Rake) don't use
parenthesis to preserve a more natural
language feel to their statements.
If you've been programming for a long time, you'll probably have an "itch" to add parentheses, and in many cases there are good reasons for this.
The code is easier on the eyes though in my opinion, and I haven't run into a problem yet--if you're going to need parentheses, you'll know it beforehand before you have to run into the debugging script.