From: Joe Van Dyk <joevandyk@...>
Date: 2005-08-19T14:00:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Python vs Ruby!

On 8/18/05, James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:
> Ben Giddings wrote:
> > On Thursday 18 August 2005 17:07, Joe Van Dyk wrote:
> >
> >>Which is better, Python or Ruby?
> >
> >
> > (checks the mailing list)
> >
> > Um... Ruby?
> >
> > But seriously, Python and Ruby are so similar that it will be really hard to
> > make a really compelling argument.  I'd go with a few things.
> >
> > 1) Are there people there that miss Perl, or have found Python not as well
> > suited to what they're doing as Perl was?  Ruby's Perl-like roots may come in
> > handy.  I think Ruby is a much more suitable language for certain tasks than
> > Python because of its Perl roots.
> 
> I find this somewhat baffling.  I'm aware that Matz was influenced by
> certain aspects of Perl, but I really don't see any alleged "Perl roots"
> when coding Ruby.  (My biased take is that this is something Pythonitas
> like to toss out about any language that allows more than one way to do
> anything.)  There are things common to both languages, but not unique to
>   the pair.
> 
> I used Perl for several years, and was fairly evangelistic about it with
> others.  I heard about Ruby, was initially put off, gave it another try,
> and never regretted it.
> 
> I recently had to go poke through some Perl code, and it was truly
> foreign.  If there were any essential similarities with Ruby, they
> eluded me.
> 
> I wouldn't try to lure Perl developers to Ruby with any suggestions that
> they can go write Ruby code with a Perl mindset or style. That's asking
> for trouble.

The style is different, sure, but a lot of the Perl shortcuts ($0, $$,
$<, etc) are there, along with ~= and those other godawful punctuation
soup operators.