What Pythonistas Think of Ruby • Hacker News Board

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#221

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 7:47 PM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #34

As someone who did nothing but Rails since 06 (two Rails-powered startups, plus some Rails contracting), allow me to explain why I dumped Ruby/Rails and switched to Python/Pylons. Batteries. Ruby is great, but outside of Rails you are on your own. Even basic things like geometry needs to be coded by hand. Python (and almost anything else) simply destroys Ruby when it comes to generic non-web centric libraries. And th…

> People. Python hackers are much, much nicer folks to hang around with. I don't like to start a war here so I'll refrain from going further with this point. Besides, I feel like Zed Shaw said it all.

I don't buy this point. I think you're confusing what Zed said about the Rails community with the reality of the Ruby community. Frankly, from what I've seen, the Rails community is a bit of a ghetto within the larger Ruby community.

I've also seen a lot of what amounts to acrimony and vitriol from Pythonistas when discussing other languages, where Rubyists (not Rails developers, specifically, but people in the broader Ruby community) have tended to be much more appreciative of what developers in other language communities, and other languages, bring to the party.

What's the difference between a Rubyist response to a Python way of doing things and a Pythonista response to a Ruby way of doing things? In my experience, the Rubyist says "Hey, that's kinda neat -- but it's not for me," but the Pythonista says "You're doing it wrong."

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#222

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

berntb wrote: post #50

patio11 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small. (Originally said about academics, but works for programmers, too.)

I have the definitive impression that the Pythonistas are more interested in this fighting than most other language cultures. I might be wrong, but I really can't mention any other group of people trolling Perl discussions. It is the same for Ruby? It really seems strange for a language which got the name from Monthy Python. (-: Is it some inferiority feelings to environments which are fun ? :-)

I've seen one Pythonista troll the ruby-talk mailing list. I have no idea whether any Rubyists troll Python's main community venue -- but if there are any, I'm pretty sure they're probably Rails people, which really have their own, separate community.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#223

Post by _pius » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #201

_pius wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. Nothing in your sarcastic "Uh ..." missive makes me or anyone else care about the features you just named. Yes, I know Ruby doesn't have True Lisp Macros. The point is, why should I care? What real-world problem can I not solve elegantly in Ruby because it lacks this language feature? "It is fast enough" is a mantra you can foist off on people who haven't put up production systems on a Merb…

> Nothing in your sarcastic "Uh ..." missive makes me or anyone else care about the features you just named. Yes, I know Ruby doesn't have True Lisp Macros. The point is, why should I care? What real-world problem can I not solve elegantly in Ruby because it lacks this language feature? It allows for the creation of real Domain Specific Languages and the real extension of lisp for a given problem domain. Do you need…

Thanks Dave.

What I'm hearing (and feel free to correct me) is that the gain over Ruby is not as much about additional expressiveness as it is about providing this expressiveness with equivalent performance to that of in-built language operators. That's fair.

I've used Lisp quite a bit (in fact, I did almost all of my first significant programming in Scheme) and even with that background, I've never bought the claim that Lisp gives you some huge practical syntactical/semantic gain over Ruby's already extremely expressive and extensible syntax. I guess I was hoping to be swayed.

N.B. apotheon's comment sums up my perspective perfectly.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#224

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 7:56 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #215

steveklabnik wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ruby code is not an annotation. It's very close to passing an anonymous function to a function. The definition of get is def get(path, opts={}, &block) See that &block? Here's the actual source of get: # Defining a `GET` handler also automatically defines # a `HEAD` handler. def get(path, opts={}, &block) conditions = @conditions.dup route('GET', path, opts, &block) @conditions = conditions route('HEAD', path, op…

The Ruby code is not an annotation. Which is exactly the problem: it should be, because it is meta-information about when the function is supposed to be called. It's not a good idea to wrap that into a function, together with the code that is supposed to be executed, because you are mixing two completely different kinds of information into some new function. This code is being too clever for it's own good: it condens…

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. By keeping the function definition near the route instead of just defining a name, I feel that it's much, much cleaner.

> I doubt that we've used a disjoint set of web libraries,

I guess I mis-spoke slightly. I meant assigning a function to a route, because I consider that (in this case) it's an anonymous function to be an irrelevant detail. Basically, to me

    get "/hello", hello
    def hello
        puts "hello"
     end

to be the as clear or less clear than the way Sinatra does it. Rails and Zend (the two frameworks I've used the most) put that 'def hello' in another file, elsewhere.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. We've apparently boiled it down to taste, so it's a good thing there are multiple languages, I guess.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#225

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 7:58 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #142

jamesbritt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ... just a troll post on Python by a Rube (that's what they're called, right?)" Speaking of which ...

It was just a joke, no offense intended. Apologies to any Rubyist who was offended.

I love Ruby. I don't really like Python as much (Python and I have irreconcilable philosophical and code-formatting differences). I was not offended.

I was, however, saddened by the fact that almost every single time I've seen a Pythonista talk about how nice Pythonistas are, the comment has included a dig at people who use other languages like that. The probability seems to run in the 90%+ range.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#226

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 8:05 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #102

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.

Does 'Rube' have a negative connotation attached to it? I mean we're calling Python devs 'Pythonistas,' which I also don't necessarily associate with negative connotations. Maybe I just haven't participated in enough Python-Ruby flamewars to know all of the 'secret' lingo that's only offensive to you if you are already part of that flamewar culture? > Indeed, this is true. It's unfortunate that so many python develop…

> Does 'Rube' have a negative connotation attached to it?

Yes, it does. Rubyists are typically called Rubyists or Ruby hackers if one does not wish to insult them. Calling a Rubyist ia "Rube" would be like calling a Pythonista a "Pyker" (reference to [piker](http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/piker), definition 2).

> Maybe I just haven't participated in enough Python-Ruby flamewars to know all of the 'secret' lingo that's only offensive to you if you are already part of that flamewar culture?

There's nothing "secret" about the insulting character of the term "rube".

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#227

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 8:06 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #100

drmock wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see. So what you are tying to say is that the non-stop bashing of Perl, PHP and Ruby from Python developers should be interpreted as just a friendly "if [you don't like python], no worries." After all, one would have to be a "Rube (that's what [Ruby developers are] called, right?)" to think that Python developers aren't friendly to people who don't worship Python.

> the non-stop bashing of [...] PHP [...] from Python developers You lost me here. PHP is the favorite flogging-boy language of a lot of developers from a lot of different environments. Trying to peg this solely on Python developers/flamers is disingenuous. You might as well try to claim that Python developers are responsible for all of the Microsoft (and/or .Net/ASP/C#) bashing that goes on around the web.

I thought including PHP in that litany of crimes was a little weird, too. I mean . . . PHP actually deserves it.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#228

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 8:12 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #173

berntb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the definitive impression that the Pythonistas are more interested in this fighting than most other language cultures. I might be wrong, but I really can't mention any other group of people trolling Perl discussions. It is the same for Ruby? It really seems strange for a language which got the name from Monthy Python. (-: Is it some inferiority feelings to environments which are fun ? :-)

I might be wrong, but I really can't mention any other group of people trolling Perl discussions. Everyone is out trolling the Perl discussions. PHP developers hate us, Java developers hate us, Ruby developers hate us, and Python developers hate us. I think this is funny, because we generally don't hate the other languages, we just embrace and extend their good ideas for Perl. (The Perl community has come up with a f…

> PHP developers hate us, Java developers hate us, Ruby developers hate us, and Python developers hate us.

Wait. Ruby? What? Did you have a bad experience with some Rails people and decide that Ruby developers hate Perl?

As someone who loves both Perl and Ruby, I haven't seen any Perl hate from Ruby developers in general. I can't vouch for Rails people, though. There are some serious social dysfunctions in that community.

> The only place outside of the Perl community where I can admit to liking Perl (and not be flamed) is #haskell.

I haven't gotten into Haskell (yet) -- but I've never gotten any shit on the ruby-talk list for "admitting" that I like Perl.

> (I've even been trolled in real life over my like of Perl. I was going after some girl, who apparently had a friend that was a Java developer. Perl came up, I came up, and it was resolved "he must not be very good at programming if he prefers Perl over Java". Guess who got the girl? Not the Perl programmer.)

Wow. WTF?

I have gotten shit from Pythonistas in person a couple of times for liking Perl, but nothing nearly that bad -- just as I have for preferring FreeBSD over "Linux".

In general, the hackers I know dislike Java, so I haven't really had the opportunity to get treated that badly by a Java developer. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#229

Post by apotheon » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 8:18 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #51

old-gregg wrote: post #34

As someone who did nothing but Rails since 06 (two Rails-powered startups, plus some Rails contracting), allow me to explain why I dumped Ruby/Rails and switched to Python/Pylons. Batteries. Ruby is great, but outside of Rails you are on your own. Even basic things like geometry needs to be coded by hand. Python (and almost anything else) simply destroys Ruby when it comes to generic non-web centric libraries. And th…

If I start every conversation with Python developers with a rant about how their language/frameworks suck I'm sure they wouldn't be very friendly with me.

What if you start a conversation without any mention of Python at all?

Re: What Pythonistas Think of Ruby

#230

Post by Confusion » Thu, Feb 04, 2010, 8:21 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #224

Confusion wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ruby code is not an annotation. Which is exactly the problem: it should be, because it is meta-information about when the function is supposed to be called. It's not a good idea to wrap that into a function, together with the code that is supposed to be executed, because you are mixing two completely different kinds of information into some new function. This code is being too clever for it's own good: it condens…

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. By keeping the function definition near the route instead of just defining a name, I feel that it's much, much cleaner. > I doubt that we've used a disjoint set of web libraries, I guess I mis-spoke slightly. I meant assigning a function to a route, because I consider that (in this case) it's an anonymous function to be an irrelevant detail. Basically, to me get "…

Thanks to you as well :). I even may come to see it your way in the near future, as it seems I'm going to be doing some Ruby coding for my new employer.