What's TOTALLY COMPELLING about Ruby over Python?

Brandon J. Van Every vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com
Tue Aug 19 00:25:44 EDT 2003


John Roth wrote:
> "Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote in message
>
>> Despite my best attempts, I find it almost impossible to slag someone
>> without including information to back up my view.  Eg, I thought my
>> numbers and trends of mentions of other programming languages was
>> pretty interesting, but I guess it was of no value to you.  :(
>
> I found it interesting, but not to the point. If there is one,
> it's simply a question of whether any of the differences are
> significant enough so someone who knows one language would
> consider switching to another one.

The conclusion around here is pretty ironclad.  From a Python standpoint,
Ruby does not matter.  And from a technical standpoint, I am not shocked.
Python is already "more exotic" than mainstream industry knows it needs.
Ruby attempts to be "more exotic" than Python.  At some point, exoticism is
not what one needs.

> Google searches won't tell
> you that, only looking for people who've made that switch
> will tell you.
>
> And I doubt if you'll find them on this newsgroup. That's the
> one problem I have with Brandon's questions. If I wanted
> to find out whether someone considered Ruby to be sufficiently
> better than Python to switch, I'd look on the Ruby newsgroup,
> not this one.

Actually, I didn't think of looking for converts.  Rather, I thought of
looking for language wonks who are knowledgeable about Python + other
languages, who had been through their own analysis of the pros and cons
already.  And I found some.

But, I will try your idea because it's a good one.  Get your marshmellows
out for c.l.p, "Why did you switch from Python to Ruby?"

-- 
Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.





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