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Has Python killed Ruby?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#51

Post by mmyoung2 »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #22

I've used Python for about about eight years, and Ruby for right at six months. It took me about a week to feel competent in Ruby, and about a month before I was really comfortable with all of the metaprogramming functionality. Add another month to that before I really grokked ActiveRecord. I much prefer Python. I thought for a long time that this was because I learned most of the fundamentals of computer science and…

When you mention grokking Active Record and Ruby's "convention over configuration", it gives the impression that you are conflating Rails with Ruby. It's similar to if someone in the Ruby camp were to conflate Django or Flask with Python. Also, functions very much are first-class citizens in Ruby, otherwise blocks, procs, and lambdas wouldn't work!

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#52

Post by ixil »

mercer wrote: post #38
LyndsySimon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of stuff you have to learn in Python is a lot more than in Ruby. I couldn't disagree more with this. Python is pretty thin when you get down to it. Magic methods alone are 80% of the way to knowing how everything in Python works. Multiple inheritance in Python is way simpler than the two-pronged inheritance scheme of Ruby, where you have both a parent class and modules (which can be loaded either before…

It's odd... I have relatively little Ruby or Python experience, but I have a kind of undefined affection for Ruby but if I'd have to choice at gunpoint I'd go for Python. I think the reason is that while Ruby does feel more 'pleasant' to me, especially the me that is new to programming, Python feels less vague, and I've grown to hate vagueness in my code. I'd probably recommend Python to new coders at this point, but…

It seems strange, why do you comment when you state you have no experience in Ruby or Python? Maybe leave the conversation to people who at least know one of the languages well.

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#53

Post by gspetr »

mamcx wrote: post #40
mercer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without any strong feelings for or against a particular language, I suspect Ruby is hurt more by this than Python, at least in the future, on account of being more web-focused. Can people in both communities confirm or deny this (and as I said I'll happily use Ruby in many of my use cases)? As for JS; what with TypeScript and ES6 (despite the worry of clutter) I can't help but wonder if it's the best non-choice we co…

I think that is a side-effect that ruby in rails was ruby in the mind of many, and python was weak at first in web (before django). In the meantime, python get a lot of love for scientific computing and other stuff, but ruby (and others, I think no even java or .net) not and then get behind in this area. So now, when the web side have more viable options and ruby is just one of many, the effect of web on ruby is felt…

> I think that is a side-effect that ruby in rails was ruby in the mind of many, and python was weak at first in web (before django).

Django was actually released first.

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#56

Post by mamcx »

gspetr wrote: post #53
mamcx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a side-effect that ruby in rails was ruby in the mind of many, and python was weak at first in web (before django). In the meantime, python get a lot of love for scientific computing and other stuff, but ruby (and others, I think no even java or .net) not and then get behind in this area. So now, when the web side have more viable options and ruby is just one of many, the effect of web on ruby is felt…

> I think that is a side-effect that ruby in rails was ruby in the mind of many, and python was weak at first in web (before django). Django was actually released first.

Yeah? Ups!

But Ruby On Rails was more popular, no?

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ixil wrote: post #52
mercer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd... I have relatively little Ruby or Python experience, but I have a kind of undefined affection for Ruby but if I'd have to choice at gunpoint I'd go for Python. I think the reason is that while Ruby does feel more 'pleasant' to me, especially the me that is new to programming, Python feels less vague, and I've grown to hate vagueness in my code. I'd probably recommend Python to new coders at this point, but…

It seems strange, why do you comment when you state you have no experience in Ruby or Python? Maybe leave the conversation to people who at least know one of the languages well.

[deleted]

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#58

Post by nnq »

bigkm wrote: post #30
LyndsySimon wrote: post #22

I've used Python for about about eight years, and Ruby for right at six months. It took me about a week to feel competent in Ruby, and about a month before I was really comfortable with all of the metaprogramming functionality. Add another month to that before I really grokked ActiveRecord. I much prefer Python. I thought for a long time that this was because I learned most of the fundamentals of computer science and…

Python's philosophy of "explicit is better than implicit" kind of dies when you get to types. Even the docs are quite vague on this too.

It's a dynamic languages... what would you expect?

For most boring everyday cases Python's "type system" (it's too much to call it so, but anyway) is quite ok, catches lots of bugs that would seep through in Javascript or PHP, plus functions as first class objects to match everyone intuition and it's quite a pleasant experience.

Re: Has Python killed Ruby?

#59

Post by nnq »

mercer wrote: post #35
josephorjoe wrote: post #12

I use both fairly regularly, and they are very similar. Where they are different in terms of syntax or capability or philosophy, I nearly always prefer ruby. I find bundler/Gemfile/rvm to be less headachy for project dependency management than pip/requirements.txt/venv. For me, ruby code is easier and more pleasant to read. When I need to write a quick bit of temporary code or do some simple data parsing/file managem…

Do you have experience with NPM and Yarn (javascript/node) and if so, how do the package managers and ecosystem compare? I'm asking because I'm primarily a js dev with a bit of Ruby and Ruby on Rails experience, and I'm wondering if Python/Ruby are worth investing in at this point and if perhaps instead it makes more sense to stick with js (Yarn in particular for package management) and explore more fundamental (C/C#…

Imho it's greatly valuable to have a "real scripting language" in you tool-belt. Node doesn't qualify like one to me, unless you're one those mutants with brains twisted in particular ways that actually like explicit-async code everywhere. Considering the age we live in, one with good interfaces to machine-learning stuff would be great, so Python is great to know well imho.

The kind of prototypes that I can hack together with Python + whatver frontend in a day can take 4x as much to do with Nodejs for me, simply because there are so many micro-decisions to make at every point (libA or micro-libC + micro-libB or mega-lib-D kind of stuff). And the way it leaves you with you "brains fried" after wrangling with some async bug... not worth it imho. Better to have the boring technical micro-decision made by someone else for you so you can concentrate on the cool stuff.

If you're working on anything where the product OR idea OR algorithm OR ux-process is much much much more important that "ecosystem" or scalability bulshit, nodejs will always feel at least 2x slower to develop in than either Python (if you're into AI/ML-ish things) or Ruby or Go or Elixir...

For web apps my alternative receipe would be to keep the web app nodejs and more the smarter-than-crud stuff to microservices written in anything but Nodejs.

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