Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the other comparatively-unpleasant language > one that lacks the elegance and consistency upvoted for perfectly concise description of that language. it is even more sad knowing that high quality alternatives for the most popular libraries exist, but inertia is simply too high. @work I've tried to introduce Ruby to my colleagues that are very bad at programming, but good at science. They ditched it with reasons lik…
How is "I don't like it" not a good reason for not using something? Ruby in science is the path of most resistance; if your work isn't already hard enough, here's a way to make it harder. That's because everyone is using Python. Think of it like writing scientific papers in English even though you like Esperanto better. Everyone uses English, so you have to too. That's Python's current state.
Don't ask me...
> Ruby in science is the path of most resistance; if your work isn't already hard enough
It actually isn't that hard, honestly.
Very few people do cutting edge work that requires analyzing massive amounts of data and, from my experience, other languages are not much better.
They still rely on C (or Rust) bindings, because they aren't adequate per se for the task.
> That's because everyone is using Python
Yep, the aforementioned inertia.
But, IMO, as a programming languages nerd, some syntax are worse than others and I have to review many Python programs that conceptually read like someone speaking a foreign language without knowing the rules, like "I go make shoppings". That code wasn't "created" but simply copy/pasted from somewhere else and then adapted because some concepts don't require understanding, just tinkering.
Python it's not easier than Ruby, shooting yourself in the foot with Python it's easier than in Ruby and yet, here we are.
At least in the diatribe C vs Rust, C is actually simpler than Rust as a language and programmers have to learn fewer concepts, even though Rust is better as a language/ecosystem overall.
> Everyone uses English, so you have to too
That's exactly the point, the most spoken language in the World is English spoken by non native speakers. Like me. It's not British English or American English (in Europe is Russian, anyway, and Chinese and Spanish would like to have a word with you).
So it is people's Esperanto, which is kinda of an abomination linguistically, but language evolve naturally it does not need a compiler or an interpreter to work.
When I am abroad for holidays or conferences, I can perfectly understand what people mean when they speak "Engrish", native speakers often don't.
A recent submission about it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25784683
But in programming the concepts are the same in every language, so it's not like learning Finnish if you are Egyptian, it's more like learning to ride a motorbike if you can ride a bicycle.
People learn Pandas and Numpy and Scikit-learn, not Python, when I learned how they worked porting the examples to Axon[1] wasn't hard. I managed to do it with the help of a colleague whose versed in learning programming and he thought Axon was more readable than Python. But then again, people usually think they know X better, feel more confident in X and will keep making the same mistakes over and over, because they don't know what they don't know and their salary do not depend on it. They have people like us fixing their code. Their salary depend on writing "I know X" on their CV, which usually is just not entirely true.
Ruby just got out of fashion, but it isn't inferior to any other language out there and its ecosystem is completely fine.
Reminder: TruffleRuby exists.
[1] https://github.com/elixir-nx/axon
edit: formatting