What Pythonistas Think of Ruby • Hacker News Board

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#131

Post by tghw » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:34 PM UTC

drmock wrote: post #93

jerf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just browsed over this entire thread, and you're by far the flamiest person here. There are always bashers. Their existence proves nothing. The question is whether they represent the bulk of the community. It's hard to speak for an entire community, but it is certainly true that the Python community leaders are not into bashing other languages routinely.

you're by far the flamiest person here. Flamier than the person who called Ruby developers "Rubes" after claiming Python is friendly to other developers? Interesting. Python community leaders are not into bashing other languages routinely Indeed, this is true. It's unfortunate that so many python developers don't follow suit.

The "Rube" comment was a joke, not a serious insult. If it genuinely offended you, I apologize.

On the other hand, if you're looking to be offended to prove a point about who is "flamier", you've succeeded.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#132

Post by tghw » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:42 PM UTC

drmock wrote: post #70

tghw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found quite the opposite; my experience with Python users has been consistently personable. If anything, the party line seems to be "this is the way we do things, if you like what you see, come on in, if not, no worries". I mean, this whole article is really just a troll post on Python by a Rube (that's what they're called, right?)

the party line seems to be "this is the way we do things, if you like what you see, come on in, if not, no worries" That is absolutely not the case; Python is the anti-TMTOWTDI. The Python community is very vocal and explicit about the conventions developers are expected to follow, more so than any other language I'm aware of: PEP 8, Zen of Python, non-stop critiques about whether some code is "pythonic" enough.

The Python community is very vocal and explicit about the conventions developers are expected to follow, more so than any other language I'm aware of: PEP 8, Zen of Python, non-stop critiques about whether some code is "pythonic" enough.

Yeah, that's the "this is the way we do things" part, but that's a different issue. Things like PEP-8 and a measure of how "Pythonic" something is helps make one of Python's biggest strengths, the "batteries included" easier to accomplish and easier to understand, because there is a consistent standard. Of course, not all code, even in the stdlib, is up to that standard, but it's more consistent than a lot of libraries you'll find.

The point I was making, and the difference from a lot of language communities I've seen is that there is little of this hyperbolic "That's not even possible in [insert-language-here]" nonsense. The Python programmers I tend to interact with don't really mind if you don't use Python, because at the end of the day, almost every language has the necessary features to Get Stuff Done.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#133

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:46 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #131

drmock wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're by far the flamiest person here. Flamier than the person who called Ruby developers "Rubes" after claiming Python is friendly to other developers? Interesting. Python community leaders are not into bashing other languages routinely Indeed, this is true. It's unfortunate that so many python developers don't follow suit.

The "Rube" comment was a joke, not a serious insult. If it genuinely offended you, I apologize. On the other hand, if you're looking to be offended to prove a point about who is "flamier", you've succeeded.

[deleted]

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#134

Post by tghw » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:46 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #83

tghw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying this because you can't monkey-patch literals? Because you can very much monkey-patch everything else in Python.

As far as I know, Python doesn't have open classes, right?

  >>> def print_a(inst):
  ... 	print inst.a
  ... 	
  >>> class Foo(object):
  ... 	def __init__(self, a):
  ... 		self.a = a
  ... 		
  >>> Foo.print_my_a = print_a
  >>> f = Foo(5)
  >>> f.print_my_a()
  5

Not sure why my previous post was downvoted, unless maybe your definition of monkey-patching is different than mine.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#135

Post by Silhouette » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:46 PM UTC

r11t wrote: post #72

sant0sk1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These fancy new blogazines, as the kids are calling them, make me really wish I had design chops. My regular old blog looks so lame and uninteresting by comparison.

Raganworld's markdown rendered blog @ github http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic has convinced me that while eye-candy and design is great, it is the content of the blog post itself that is of more value to me as a reader.

Ironically, it did the opposite for me. I used to read and enjoy Reg's blog posts. Since he made the change to the new format, I don't think I've read anything he's written there: it doesn't work like anything else any more, and while his blog was one of those I enjoyed, I rarely go out of my way to find content like that when there are many other blogs competing for my limited spare time.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#136

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:56 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #134

steveklabnik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Python doesn't have open classes, right?

>>> def print_a(inst): ... print inst.a ... >>> class Foo(object): ... def __init__(self, a): ... self.a = a ... >>> Foo.print_my_a = print_a >>> f = Foo(5) >>> f.print_my_a() 5 Not sure why my previous post was downvoted, unless maybe your definition of monkey-patching is different than mine.

Well, I didn't downvote it, but you can't do this with _everything_ in Python, like you can in Ruby.

    $ irb
    irb(main):001:0> class Numeric
    irb(main):002:1>   def wtf
    irb(main):003:2>     puts "hey"
    irb(main):004:2>   end
    irb(main):005:1> end
    => nil
    irb(main):006:0> 5.wtf
    hey
    => nil

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#137

Post by stevenwei » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 8:56 PM UTC

9oliYQjP wrote: post #106

sreque wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really have to switch from one to another? I learned both languages, love them both, and use them both. There's too much hate in the world of programming languages.

You don't have to choose a single option, even for a particular project. I've worked on websites/apps that have integrated 2 or 3 different server-side languages and frameworks. If you have a programmer that says "eww I'm not touching the WordPress part because it's in PHP" they just aren't the kind of programmer I want working on the project. Also, if you have a programmer that goes out an freaking re-implements Wor…

There is a drawback to this, obviously. If your codebase is some scattered mish mash of Python, PHP, Actionscript, Javascript, Java, etc, your ability to reuse code diminishes at the language boundaries. You end up having to write very similar code to deal with the same objects on the client side and the server side in multiple languages, producing more code to maintain overall.

Unfortunately because of the nature of the web I haven't seen any real good solution to this yet. At minimum, you're usually dealing with some combination of Python/Ruby/PHP backend and some amount of Javascript/Actionscript on the frontend.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#138

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 9:03 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #131

drmock wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're by far the flamiest person here. Flamier than the person who called Ruby developers "Rubes" after claiming Python is friendly to other developers? Interesting. Python community leaders are not into bashing other languages routinely Indeed, this is true. It's unfortunate that so many python developers don't follow suit.

The "Rube" comment was a joke, not a serious insult. If it genuinely offended you, I apologize. On the other hand, if you're looking to be offended to prove a point about who is "flamier", you've succeeded.

[deleted]

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#139

Post by Locke1689 » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

pavelludiq wrote: post #55

wvenable wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syntax is human. Syntax is ergonomics. A programming language is the bridge between man and machine. Lisp, I would argue, is far more about the machine than the man and that is the simple reason why it's not more popular. Python was cool before the libraries; that's why those libraries got written in the first place. Lisp has been around forever and is still lacking in libraries and other support.

"Lisp, I would argue, is far more about the machine than the man and that is the simple reason why it's not more popular." Pleas do, i would love to hear your argument. I fail to see how lisp is less humane than python, when i find it to be exactly the opposite. Edit: what i meant was that lisp is more about the human, not that python is more about the machine, i hope i don't get misunderstood.

I tend to prefer languages which are expressive.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

Therefore I like Python for imperative programming and its extensive libraries and far prefer Haskell to any LISP dialect for functional programming. Haskell is elegant in a way LISP wishes it could be.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#140

Post by Confusion » Wed, Feb 03, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

fuzzyman wrote: post #25

pavelludiq wrote: post #14

I am one of those people who accepted the lisp religion of "syntax is evil". I have a descent knowledge of python, and I've read a few ruby tutorials. Neither python nor ruby are lisp. Python is not cool because of generators, list comprehensions, decorators or any other feature. Ruby is not cool because of blocks or monkey patching(im suspicions of anything called MONKEY patching). Ruby and python are cool because o…

And not being Lisp is one of the big reasons for the success of both Python and Ruby. :-) FLAMEBAIT -> FLAMEBAIT

I fail to see how that is flame bait. It's actually a quite insightful statement that is worth repeating: Python, Ruby and all other languages exist for a reason. The reason is that other languages, including Lisp, are not considered to be equally useful for the tasks for which a specific language is being used. Python is not only not Lisp: it's not Java, not Haskell, not Erlang, not ...

Whether it is a good reason, and whether these considerations are sensible, is a separate discussion. Whichever way you put it: they exist and should be acknowledged.