Ask HN: Why Python over Ruby?

Post by nor-and-or-not » Wed, Jul 01, 2009, 11:08 AM UTC

benhoyt wrote: post #69

bdr wrote: post #16

I prefer the design of Python over Ruby. I'd be hard pressed to explain why -- something vague about Python being straightforward yet graceful -- but that aesthetic preference is enough to sway me.

Me too, but I don't think it's just a preference. I come from a C/C++ background (I'd say the majority of people do, or C# or Java), and Python looks much more familiar and obvious to me than Ruby. For example, this from Wikipedia: (3..6).each {|num| puts num } Has some funny brackets and pipes. In Python, it's much more familiar to C-ish folks like me: for i in range(3, 7): print i

  for i in 3..6 do
    puts i
  end

Post by nailer » Wed, Jul 01, 2009, 11:21 AM UTC

sho wrote: post #42

nailer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, that was ambiguous, I've edited my post to clarify. The behavior I'm referring to is loading XML into a tree shaped data structure, so you can reference particular branches when seeking or adding content, and not have to think about about tags (well, once you'veran it though BeautifulSoup or a similar cleaner).

That's OK, my reply was also pretty ambiguous :D I am not really familiar enough with Python to say for sure but from what I know, XML libraries are probably superior on the Python side - in fact most "enterprise" interoperability libraries are probably better, or at least more mature. The situation on the Ruby side is improving rapidly, but given its history, yeah, many things like that are probably a little behind.…

Post by swombat » Wed, Jul 01, 2009, 11:24 AM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #52

gaius wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cultural issue. In the Ruby (or Perl) community, if you use obscure language features to do a common task in a single line of code, you will be worshipped as a god. In the Python (or Tcl) community, you will be viewed with suspicion. Not that Python doesn't have one-liners (e.g. comprehensions) - just that everyone agrees which ones and when and how to use them.

I've been working in Ruby for 3 years now, and i can promise you that unclear code is very much not appreciated by not only the people i work with, but all of the open source projects i'm involved with. It is true that Ruby gives you a lot of rope. People with good design sense appreciate that your code should not be too clever.

Post by johnbender » Wed, Jul 01, 2009, 11:56 AM UTC

nor-and-or-not wrote: post #71

benhoyt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, but I don't think it's just a preference. I come from a C/C++ background (I'd say the majority of people do, or C# or Java), and Python looks much more familiar and obvious to me than Ruby. For example, this from Wikipedia: (3..6).each {|num| puts num } Has some funny brackets and pipes. In Python, it's much more familiar to C-ish folks like me: for i in range(3, 7): print i

Ruby's syntax is flexible: for i in 3..6 do puts i end

    3.upto(6){ |x| puts x }

Post by colins_pride » Wed, Jul 01, 2009, 12:09 PM UTC

wildjim wrote: post #67

plaes wrote: post #19

Python has IMHO better support for GUI toolkits - Tk support in main library, PyGTK+, PyQt. And two more words about library - import antigravity :). And strong company backing: Google has have hired some of the core Python developers, and some of its infrastructure is written in it... Flumotion with its streaming media (although codec stuff is mostly gstreamer, but most of the networking stuff is in Python) And the…

People should be careful how much they quote Google as their reason for preferring Python. The main reason was when they were standardising on the core-languages they could support, Python was enormously far ahead cf. the competition, so it was an obvious choice. And now, with all that code investment, you do NOT want to start again. And if you have the money, of course you'd be interested in hiring the best develope…