Python's popularity

[walterbyrd]

On Dec 22, 10:13 am, r <rt8... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since the
> advent of Ruby(Python closet competitor), Python's hold on this niche
> is slipping.

About the only place I ever hear of ruby being used is web development
with RoR. When it comes to web development, it seems to me that ruby
(because of rails) is far more popular than python. It seems to me
that ruby is the niche player, and python (with fairly new frameworks)
is trying to catch up to ruby in that niche. It seems to me that the
python web framework that best competes with rails, is Django, and
Django 1.0 just came out a few months back.

> A lot of Ruby noobies don't even realize that most of
> Ruby is an out-right plagiarism of Python.

Maybe. But the rails framework seems to have a different philosophy
than the django, turbogears, or pylons, frameworks. RoR values
convention over configuration, and has a lot of "magic" whereas the
python frameworks seem to have the opposite philosophy - in those
regards. I see pros and cons to both approaches. I wonder what the
market with think?

> Now since Python *is not* the only language on it's block, we have to
> compete with our main nemesis(Ruby) for survival

I think both python and ruby will "survive." I think python is also
competing with perl in the sysadmin space - although I see perl as
being much more popular there.