What's better about Ruby than Python?

[Michele Simionato]

Jacek Generowicz <jacek.generowicz at cern.ch> wrote in message news:<tyfr83cen6h.fsf at lxplus079.cern.ch>...
> mis6 at pitt.edu (Michele Simionato) writes:
> 
> > That said, I do agree that the presence of hundreds of dialects works
> > against the adoption of Lisp. For instance, this stopped me (together
> > with other factors).
> 
> So why did the presence of "hundreds of dialects" of scripting
> languages not stop you adapting a scripting language ?
> 
> As I've mentioned elsewhere; objecting to the existence of multiple
> dialects of Lisp (essentially, languages which represent their source
> code in a form they can easily manipulate), as as daft as objecting to
> the existence of multiple dialects of the Algol Language family, or to
> the existence of multiple languages with significant indentation.

I disagree.

Perl is NOT a dialect of Python. Ruby is NOT a dialect of Python. Tcl
is NOT a dialect of Python. They are entirely different languages, at
least at the syntactical level (which DOES matter when you learn a
language, since you must memorize the syntax too) and on the conceptual
level too. I would concede than in many ways Python, Perl and Ruby are 
similar and more or less with the same power, bust still the way of
programming in one or the other is completely different.

I would concede that Lisp is different from Scheme, more at the conceptual
level that at the syntactical level. But still the reality is that the
different implementations of Lisp and Scheme are different, especially
in what concern the interface with the operating system and scripting
facilities, which is what one does all the time (at least in this
mailing list ;). So once I know an implementation, I am never sure 
my program will run on another implementation, if you prefer the term
implementation to the term dialect. On top of that, how am I supposed
to choose my implementation? Too much choice (meaning a too much fragmented
community) can scare potential lisp newcomers. At least it scared me.
There is only one dominant implementation of Python, CPython. All the
others try to match it as soon as possible. I expect Jython 2.2 (now
in alpha) will catch up with CPython, at some moment. The goal of
PyPy or Stackless is to enhance CPython, but taking CPython as base
reference. In Scheme there is no such a basic reference, I am correct?
Lisp has CL, but learning CL will not help me very much with Emacs
Lisp which is what I would need the most ;) I am joking a bit here; 
BTW, we are going as bit off topic, so let me stop here.

Michele Simionato, Ph. D.
MicheleSimionato at libero.it
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~micheles
--- Currently looking for a job ---