From: Damian Terentyev <threeeyedfish@...>
Date: 2007-01-22T16:58:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and Python, questions (not a flamewar!)

Good day!
First, let me apologise for some Japanese nationalism and Ruby 
fanaticism, and do not be offended if I say something inappropriate.

On Jan 20, 2007, at 05:21, Tom Pollard wrote:
>
> Well, Ruby was written by a /person/, not a culture, and it's largely 
> a tasteful amalgam of good ideas introduced in those old "Western" 
> languages.  I'd be interested to hear what you (or anyone else) thinks 
> is distinctively non-Western about Ruby, as opposed to C or Lisp or 
> Smalltalk.

It is worth noting that a person who created Ruby have originated from 
a distinct (Japanese) culture. And one of the key characteristics of 
Japanese culture is its openness for adoption of other cultures. Many 
great pieces of Japanese culture were taken from others and then 
transformed by adding subtle differences, thus making them (IMHO) 
perfect. Think about Zen Buddhism (a philosophy that came from China), 
or quality control (curiously, an American idea that originally didn't 
get support in the US and had to be adopted later from Japanese) — the 
trend is obvious.
And I don't think it would be an exaggeration to see something similar 
in Ruby design. All Ruby's features were widely known and used in a 
whole bunch of high-level languages, but it took a Japanese to unite 
them together in such subtly unique way that was Ruby, and the result 
was a (IMHO) perfect language.
Python has similar capabilities (and is even a little more advanced if 
we speak about Unicode support, and more mature if we speak about many 
third-party libraries available), but it doesn't make programming fun 
as Ruby claims, and in fact, does. It is those small subtleties that 
make this possible. The ability to write [1,2,3].length and 
[1,2,3].size as it pleases you, those funny blocks instead of dull 
for-loops or clumsy lambdas, optional use of parentheses — all this 
makes writing programs more natural and pleasant.

1. print is a statement in Python 2 and I can imagine no programmer who 
deliberately chooses to write print("boo") instead of just print "boo". 
And in Python 3 it's going to become a function so that only the former 
syntax will be correct. They say, to make it more readable. I don't 
think lots of parentheses and brackets improve readability.
2. indentation eliminates multiple "end" clauses but makes pure python 
virtually unacceptable for use as a templating language. And again, I'm 
not sure that

if boo:
	doo()

is more readable than simple "doo if boo"
3. can't understand why only in recent 2.5 Python became to agree with 
both "except" and "finally" clauses in exception handling.

These are the examples of constraints that Python puts on programmer's 
mind. They are not severe, but a creative mind searching for a solution 
doesn't want any limits at all! Ruby really gets out of your way when 
you create programs. And maybe it is that freedom that makes 
programming Ruby fun. And that's why there couldn't exist such thing as 
Python on Rails. Ruby attracts programmers that want to freely 
experience their thoughts and have fun — and this is why it yields such 
original and convenient products.

An answer to the OP's questions — why Ruby is not as wide-spread as 
Python — lies in two domains:

1. Aforementioned language barrier and Ruby's youn age in general.

2. Ruby's flexible syntax gives too much freedom — and this may drive 
away some less creative programmers that need something solid under 
their feet. When you first com to Ruby you may become overwhelmed with 
all that freedom and panic :)

Thanks for your attention.

Your sincerely,
Damian/Three-eyed Fish