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Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

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Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#21

Post by prodigal_erik »

finnw wrote: post #11

Who is the article (at least the first half of it) aimed at? Are there any Java developers who still haven't dabbled with dynamic languages but could still be convinced to? I imagine that those who will already have done, and the rest will never touch any language not in the "enterprise" class (Java, C#, C++, COBOL etc.)

I don't see anything suddenly more compelling about Python (which I've always liked, at least among imperative languages) but I for one was pretty startled to learn that V8 was already within 2-3x the cost of JVM bytecode. That can make server-side Javascript feasible for work where Python or Ruby would need an order of magnitude more rack units today.

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#22

Post by jerf »

treetrouble wrote: post #14
mbell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been tried before. mum, Numerical Ruby and SciRuby were all attempts. The fundamental issue I believe they all had is lack of community. There is a quite large community of folks using Python for scientific computing. Many are not professional developers but rather scientists / engineers who aren't as open to jumping around to different languages as a developer would be. These issues combined with the fact that…

These kinds of projects can take years to take hold; you can't expect people to just all switch right away. Blog posts like this just need to be commented on with a link to those libraries. Eventually some big lecture, class or project will use one of those libraries and a whole new group of people will supplement the community. This doesn't just go for Ruby, it applies to any language Ruby performance in general is…

There's more inertia here than you may be thinking. See this recent HN headliner about the difficulty of getting the NumPy/SciPy community to merely move from CPython to PyPy: http://technicaldiscovery.blogspot.com/2011/10/thoughts-on-p...

If that's a challenge, good luck getting a lot of NotProgrammers to move to a completely different language.

Besides, if I may be blunt, who in Rubyland cares if these guys are on Python? By and large, these people are on an island. They are optimizing for things you pretty much don't care about, for programming styles you're not using, for libraries you've barely heard of. Trying to entice them off of Python onto Ruby is a waste of time for everybody. The Ruby community would at best get nothing, at worst net pain of supporting a lot of newbies, and the scientists would incur the horrifying overhead of a language shift for the closest thing to a sidegrade available in the set of the top 20-ish language. If they were going to do that they probably shouldn't be going for Ruby, they should probably be going for Haskell or OCaml, both languages for which I could outline actual advantages to the scientists for the pain of the switch (though probably not enough to justify the switch).

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#24

Post by michaelchisari »

treetrouble wrote: post #16
michaelchisari wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have the opposite reaction. I think python is very elegant, and I really appreciate it's "one and only one way" philosophy, as opposed to ruby's "you are a special snowflake" approach. It really can be just a matter of preference, though. Python and Ruby are so, so, so similar, that ultimately I find flamewars between them to be tiring at best.

Characterizing the Ruby philosophy as "you are a special snowflake" is, well, starting a flamewar

Honest question, how would you characterize it?

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#25

Post by michaelchisari »

djacobs wrote: post #20
michaelchisari wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have the opposite reaction. I think python is very elegant, and I really appreciate it's "one and only one way" philosophy, as opposed to ruby's "you are a special snowflake" approach. It really can be just a matter of preference, though. Python and Ruby are so, so, so similar, that ultimately I find flamewars between them to be tiring at best.

I think if you read the followup article, you'll see it's not flame bait. I'm legitimately trying to foster a discussion here.

Oh yeah, that was more of a general comment on python vs. ruby discussions, not a specific reference to your article.

Although the point stands that I don't see the purpose in passionately arguing one or the other, since they are so similar.

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#26

Post by ashleyw »

treetrouble wrote: post #7

Seems like it would be a huge opportunity for people to start creating these science Ruby gems. Not my field, personally...

In my experience, Ruby and number crunching just don't match. Python's not especially fast to begin with, but I've definitely found it to be faster than Ruby. Though I probably wouldn't choose Python for number crunching either. If I were extracting some time-sensitive algorithm, I'd most likely go straight to something like Clojure.

And I must stress how much I love Ruby. It's my go-to language for the web/small scripts.

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#28

Post by lusis »

michaelchisari wrote: post #24
treetrouble wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Characterizing the Ruby philosophy as "you are a special snowflake" is, well, starting a flamewar

Honest question, how would you characterize it?

TMTOWTDI.

Ruby, for all the problems it can cause, gives you. More than one way to solve a problem. Yes, it sometimes makes it harder to dive into other's code but I happen to enjoy the expressiveness.

Mind you I love some of the things about python too. Namespacing being one of the primary ones. Another is that, short of advances pythonfu (like django does), I can usually pick up someone else's code and dive right in.

Python has amazing access to mathematical and scientific libraries as mentioned. However with ruby, I would punt to the Java ecosystem via JRuby if I needed that.

It's a lot like design patterns. Some patterns don't fit in all languagea but that's usually a case of the language itself giving you another way. Mixins in ruby are a good example.

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#29

Post by clojurerocks »

djacobs wrote: post #19

I wrote this article almost a year ago as a tribute to my favorite language at the time. (That title now belongs to Clojure.) It feels like if you want to do scientific computing in Ruby, you're met with obstacles at every turn, but with Python, you're greeted with open arms and tested libraries. That could change (and I'm beginning work on a stats library for Ruby), but it will take time. This was partially a call t…

I had a similiar experience myself actually. You should actually check out the R language if youre interested in scientific computing. Speaking of the python communittee i watched many videos from djangocon this year and was really impressed by the openness of the leaders of the project. Also django i think is rally starting to gain more momentum. Alot of very cool things going on with the framework and communitee..

Re: Ruby is beautiful (but I'm moving to Python)

#30

Post by holman »

gerggerg wrote: post #6

I never really understood the drama around switching tools. Picking the right one for the job is the first thing you should do.

I'm fine with being fairly passionate with your "default" language you turn to more often than not. Personally, I really love Ruby, and I'm happy with that.

The problem is the whole attacking thing. If you really love another language, that's cool. I definitely sided more towards the camp of "fuck you, my way is better" in my younger days... I think it's just something most people grow out of, in time. Either in maturity, or in sheer terms of being exposed to different ways of thinking.

Now I just find people's taste in other languages fascinating. Always more to learn, even if it's not directly relevant to your situation.

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