What's better about Ruby than Python?

[Michael Peuser]

"John J. Lee" <jjl at pobox.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:87ekzj6pbz.fsf at pobox.com...
> "Michael Peuser" <mpeuser at web.de> writes:
> [...]
> > I don't know much about Ruby but I did some substantial programming in
> > Python and Perl. I should now consider side issues more important than
> > language features itself:
> >
> > - How fast does the code run
> > - Is there an acceptable IDE (best: GUI/IDE  RAD-Framework)
> > - Is there a flexible and fast GUI Toolkit
> > -Can you access OpenGL
> > - Which platforms are supported
> > - How easy is multimedia (Sound/Movie in- and output)
> > - How can you deploy your program
> > - How large is a self contained EXE file
> > - Is there mathematical support (array arithmetic, statistical
functions,
> > plotting)
> > - Is there documentation
> > - Are there books
>
> AFAIK, none of these are distinguishing features between Python and
> Perl.
>
I absolutly disagree! We are (probably) not talking about the academic
merits of  the languages, but of what you can do with them with reasonable
effort.

Those "side issues" I mentioned above (and some more, and some of them not
relevant for everyone) have - this is my experience - influenced my
productivity more than everything else.
Most of the things we do with - especially so called script languages is
inetrfacing library packages. Thoug this is not a feature of the languge it
is most important how to do it, what pachages have already been bound etc
etc. Consider the permanent discussions about what GUI oder IDE to use. The
OpenSource situation is, well unclear. I have learning a lot about that
durung the last two weeks, and I would say: Well perhaps take eric3 and
PyQt. But in fact I have no experience with eric and I very little with Qt.

If all those would be in a state as VB with its Active-X support and quitre
acceptable application framework or - eben better - as compiled RealBasic on
Macintosh with its universal Quicktime interface, then I should say you
could discuss fines language matters. (One should mention Delphi as well.)

But this is not the case.

> The really major differences are: Perl has tons of library code
> (though Python has lots) and Perl has a pile of stuff you have to
> learn that brings no significant benefits.  It'd be great to see more
> research on the impact of the nonsense-overhead that comes with Perl
> (and is absent from Python).


Just amount of "library code" is not what matters. You cannot have found it
on my list ;-)
Perl is not much better than Python - I think I did not mention that
explicitly.


Kindly Michael P

>
> John