From: Mike Stok Date: 2001-10-27T00:16:14+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:23464] Re: Ruby and Python: a fuzzy question On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Dave Thomas wrote: [...] > So, here's my question. As Paul Prescod has said, Ruby and Python are > fairly similar in many significant ways. Despite this, I personally > have never managed to get excited about Python, but liked Ruby so much > I wrote a book about it. Other folks have the opposite experience, > loving Python and not finding much to thrill them about Ruby. Why is > that? Is it some kind of personality clash between the language and > the programmer? Is it liking what you're used to? Is it liking or > disliking the philosophies of the languages' designers? Or is it > something else? Is there some kind of language gestalt which draws on the language itself, the language's creator, tools available for the language and the community of people around the language too? How these mix and how a person feels about that mix probably affects how that person takes to the language. The language itself is probably less important than the other elements. Here are the things that I think helped me get into Ruby: * When I tried Ruby out I could get useful stuff done in 10 minutes, and that helped hook me. * The Pickaxe book reminds me of my battered old first edition of Programming Perl, it attracts me to the language rather than telling me to use it. * The Ruby people I've met seem to share the same joyfully inclusive attitude to other languages like the perl developers, and each language assimilates features in its own way. They seem to be into tool honing rather than axe grinding. The people are the most important thing to me, I have fun socialising with people I meet through languages, and the more fun I have the more time I invest in the language. Mike -- mike@stok.co.uk | The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply. http://www.stok.co.uk/~mike/ | GPG PGP Key 1024D/059913DA | Fingerprint 0570 71CD 6790 7C28 3D60 | 75D2 9EC4 C1C0 0599 13DA