[Tutor] Help deciding between python and ruby

[Luke Paireepinart]

A  primary draw of Ruby has always been Ruby on Rails, a web framework.
 Python has a lot of really good web frameworks now, though, so this is less
of a concern.When I tried to learn Ruby, the docs were terrible.  The
primary developers are Japanese, and the translations were very poor and
incomplete.  I hear it's much better now but I haven't bothered checking.
 Also, language syntax is very important to me, and (here's the subjective
bit) I thought Ruby's syntax was awful compared to Python's, though better
than a lot of other languages.

IF you're concerned about the power of Python, consider this:  I'm a
Computer Science grad student, and I've worked in the industry as well
(internships and such), so I've used a myriad of languages (C, C++, C#,
Java, Python, PHP, JSP, Perl, all the web stuff, etc, etc.) both
academically and professionally, but I use Python for ALL of my personal
projects.  If something's not fast enough, I just drop that part down to C.
 Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  Okay, C stuff is a little involved.  But Python
is so fast I hardly ever have to do that, even when I do game programming.

I just like languages to be as transparent as possible.  Python fits with
the way I solve problems.  When I read over a Python program I've written,
all the syntax just drops away and I see the algorithms I had in my head
when I wrote the code.  I document, but I don't really need to most of the
time.  I really like Python.

Also if you haven't noticed, a lot of the code examples on Wikipedia are
Python, not pseudocode.  Python's actually easier to read than pseudocode,
because it has a more well-defined syntax (pseudocode is pretty much made up
as you go along.)

Python's standard library and community are also outstanding.  Come join us!
 You'll like it here.
http://xkcd.com/353/

It might be a good idea to try what Randall did, write 20 short programs
(calculate fibonacci, prefix sums, merge sort, auto-organize a folder that's
been bothering you, something like that) in both Python and Ruby and see
which one you like more.

Let us know what you decide, especially if you choose Ruby!  I'd like to
know your reasoning.  If you have any problems with Python we'll be happy to
help!  Just make sure you read the rules for posting, and that you make a
concerted effort to figure it out yourself.  That's really the best way to
learn a language; we try to give you just enough help to get you on your
way, without just solving everything for you.
Good luck!
-Luke

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 3:18 PM, dan06 <dan.king106 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> I'd like to learn a programming language - and I need help deciding between
> python and ruby. I'm interesting in learning what are the difference, both
> objective and subjective, between the two languages. I know this is a
> python
> mailing list, so knowledge/experience with ruby may be limited - in which
> case I'd still be interested in learning why members of this mailing list
> chose python over (or in addition to) any other programming language. I
> look
> forward to the feedback/insight.
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Help-deciding-between-python-and-ruby-tp25294195p25294195.html
> Sent from the Python - tutor mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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