Re: What say about Ruby when marketing Python?

On Thursday 04 March 2004 11:59 am, [email protected] wrote:
> I've been suggesting people consider Python.
> People sometimes ask about Ruby and how it compares
> to Python.  I found a few differences but no difference
> between either that makes one overwhelmingly better than the other.
> They both seem very good in design and both are much better
> than Perl.
>
> What do people say when marketing Python and people
> ask you "What about Ruby?"
>
> (Yes I've read lots of threads on the minor differences but
> that is all I can find... minor differences.)
>
> (A related but important question is how to answer the
> question "What about Ruby" without getting into a religious war
> with your audience.)

The languages are very similiar, but there is one significant difference. The 
best language choice for a project depend on the goals of the project. Alex 
Martelli has done a great job of explaining the similiarities and 
differences. I summarized his analysis in the UserLinux wiki page discussing 
Python to Ruby comparisons. 

	http://www.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RubyPython_Discuss


**Alex Martelli calls it a wash**

Alex provides a side by side comparison of the features of Ruby and Python in 
a posting to the comp.lang.python mailing list 
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bhqr78021hp%40enews1.newsguy.com. He 
concludes that the langauges are very much alike and that most differences 
are only cosmetic. His one exception to this observation is seen in the 
following quote from the message: 

 """ Ruby "goes to eleven" in this regard (the reference here is to "Spinal 
Tap", of course). In Ruby, there are no limits to my creativity -- if I 
decide that all string comparisons must become case-insensitive, _I CAN DO 
THAT_! i.e., I can dynamically alter the built-in string class so that

a = "Hello World"
b = "hello world"
if a == b
    print "equal!\n"
else
    print "different!\n"
end

 WILL print "equal". In python, there is NO way I can do that. """

He sees this as """a crucial issue -- one that makes Ruby much more suitable 
for "tinkering", BUT Python equally more suitable for use in large production 
applications. """