From: paul@...
Date: 2002-09-06T05:44:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

> I think we have communicated very well; I agree with all you said.  May I
> know what features that you value Python over Ruby?  (I am not starting a
> war between Python and Ruby; I just want to know what features that I may
> be missing and whether it can be reproduced rather easily in Ruby
> through secondary constructs.  So far, I just miss the
> "minimalism" feature of Python and all those libraries...)

The consistency of Python code makes me more confident that I can bring on
new programmers quickly. Non-blocking threads and Unicode are important
for some of my applications. Sometimes Jython (which I think is more
mature than JRuby). I don't know if Ruby has something like distutils
which builds modules using the platform-native tools no matter the
platform. I am getting qutie interested in Pyrex and psycho that can
accelerate Python code.

So basically Python has more infrastructure. The only deep issue that
would make me prefer Python to Ruby is the code consistency and general
language simplicity issue. That's important to me. There are parts of Ruby
I prefer too.

 Paul Prescod