update_attribute is annoying, what about a bang method?

I liked the idea, very nice.

+1, sounds cool for me

update_attribute sometimes confuses me, I often try to pass a hash for it, mainly when I write some update_attributeS before :)

The implementation also seemed very natural.

Read:
@foo.bar

Write:
@foo.bar=

Query:
@foo.bar?

... ergo Update: @foo.bar!

... looks like the project was asking for an Update module :D

+1 sounds natural and it is less code to write.

+1 that's a good feature, much more ruby like.

+1 less code and very intuitive

-1

Dropping = is actually counter-intuitive and not very Ruby-like. It's even less Rails-like.

It's pretty easy to use:

@foo.bar = 'baz' and @foo.save

Or if you prefer not to have an and (and I can't blame you):

@foo.set(:bar, 'baz')

Seems pretty straightforward and much shorter, plus it's just an alias for update_attribute.