What's better about Ruby than Python?

[Andrew Dalke]

Doug Tolton:
> You are saying you don't know how to tweak a language to fit it your
> specific domain better than a general puprose language?  And you are
> saying you are a pretty good language designer?

I've been thinking about that.

Any language designer can design a language.

A good designer can add useful features.

A great designer knows when to keep features out of
the language.


I maintain that I am a good language designer, but not a
great one.  There are enough average or mediocre designers
(law of large numbers almost guarantees a bell curve) that
I prefer ways to keep them from meddling into what I do.
Only somewhat facetiously:  "Go play somewhere else
and don't bother me until you've learned something."

Facetious because anyone who knows me knows that
I enjoy explaining how things work and how they got to
be that way.  It's the inability to get into another's shoes -
to understand view different than one's own - which annoys
me the most.  A deficiency sadly typical of all too many
enthusiastic new language designers.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com