Re: Linux Magazine (April 2002) article

I bought the magazine at Barnes and Nobles two days ago.

As a Pythonista hobhyist who has been fascinated by Ruby (and ogling the
pickaxe book) for about a year, the brilliant ruby on the cover of the
magazine caught my attention.

The magazine also contained a similar article on Python by Alex Martelli. I
have admired Mr. Martelli's posts on the python newsgroups, and he is
probably the one poster who I find most readable, intelligent, and clear.
He is a good writer.

But your Ruby article is easily better. That article is about as good an
enticing intro to Ruby as I can imagine; it is very clear.

In fact, I was able to follow the programing logic in your article's scripts
effortlessly and enjoyably, even easier than I followed the logic in
Mr. Martelli's Python article, after one year of studying Python.

I went back and translated all your article's scripts into Python, trying to
determine why I liked the Ruby versions so much better. I couldn't figure it
out. The Python versions were of course very similar.

But I went out and bought the Ruby pickaxe book the next day (yesterday).

I hope to next re-write some of my Python scripts in Ruby. Maybe I can make
them better by using a clean, true object oriented appoach (they are mainly
writtin in a functionally style).

I hope I can get some help and encouragement here. I am a duffer I guess;
programming is not my profession, I am a physicist by education who has been
in the business world (electronics) for 30 years. But I love to program
little things; it has become my full-time hobby ;-)))

I will always be grateful to Python; it got me far enough along to actually
see it through and do some stuff; but I am looking forward to trying Ruby
now.

Ron Stephens, my web site Python City (perhaps Ruby city will be founded?)
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html