From: John Gabriele <jmg3000@...>
Date: 2006-04-28T00:34:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for command line applications

On 4/26/06, Alan M <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a Linux administrator and I use Perl for scripting.
> I do not develop any web applications. My programs are command line
> tools.
>
> At this phase I am thinking to upgrade my programming language to either
> Python or Ruby.
>
> Considering the fact that I won't develop any web application, Which one
> would be a better choice for me Perl or Ruby?
>
> Thank you,
> Alan
>

They're both good choices. I'm fairly new to Ruby, but here's my 2 cents.

Plusses for Python:
- Tends to be a consistent language (not *too* many ways to do the same thing).
- Good library support.
- Good written docs (command-line pydoc docs are lacking though, IMO).
- Easily embeddable.

Minuses for Python:
- OO features seem a little trickier to me than Ruby's (bound vs.
unbound methods, class vs. static vs. plain vanilla methods).
- Some Python snobbishness in the community (just my opinion). Though,
the majority of Pythonistas are friendly and helpful.
- They put their docstrings *below* the thing they're documenting
instead of above it, where nature of course intended. ;)
- Personally, not fond of the whitespace-dependent code formatting
(though many many folks claim they get used to it quickly).

Plusses for Ruby:
- Ruby seems a little more tailored for admin work than Python (since
Ruby has built in regexes, easy stdin/stdout)
- RDoc (documentation for your scripts comes right from plain old
comments above the thing they're documenting).
- Personally, I prefer its (Perl-like) string handling to Python's.

Minuses for Ruby:
- Lack of docs (good printed books though)