From: Mark Kremer <mark@...>
Date: 2009-05-31T23:59:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Pythonic indentation (or: beating a dead horse)

Juan Zanos wrote:
>> However, Ruby is about 10 years old now, Python and its insertion is 
>> even older.
>> If it would be so superior, didn't you think it would have been 
>> widely accepted in the mean time?
>> And would have been spread over to other scripting languages already?
>
> You might.  And you'd be right.  Python is widely accepted.  Python, 
> by every indication I'm aware of, is more popular than Ruby.  TIOBE 
> lists Python is slightly more than twice as popular as Ruby 
> (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html).   
> And arguably, excluding any discussion of indentation, Ruby is a 
> better language.  
And as you can see on the same lists the top 5 languages (which includes 
PHP, which is the most popular scripting language) all use an "end" or 
{} for code blocks. That could be a clear indication that identation is 
not the preferred method to define code blocks.

> I'm told that at Google they won't even  let you code in Ruby.   They 
> only allow a limited number of popular languages, which includes 
> Python but not Ruby.
It makes sense to limit the amount of languages programmed in an 
environment, as you need programmers with the appropriate knowledge and 
skills to maintain your code. My previous employer did everything in PHP 
5. This was not so because it is the best language for every job (it 
clearly isn't), but because it was easy to hire and train programmers 
with a decent skill level on it and all of the (relatively small) 
company's programmers could work on all of the company's code.