Ask HN: What should I learn next: Ruby or Python ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078628

by olalonde • 16 years ago

8 23 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm coming from a C/C++/PHP/Javascript background. I'm not sure which to learn between Python and Ruby. Both language are very similar and lately, Ruby seems to get a lot of hype (thanks to Ruby on Rails). However, Python has Django and is the language of choice of Google so it can't be bad ;) Which one would you recommend me to learn ?

alnayyir6• 16 years ago

I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.

olalonde• 16 years ago

Thanks for the honest insight.

alnayyir6• 16 years ago

Thanks for the friendly response, haha. I went into more detail about what was bothering me in Django in another reply by the way.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

What are your hangups with Django?

I've gone through the same so I'm wondering if we are running in to the same kind of issues.

alnayyir6• 16 years ago

Forms are a fragile waste of time 80% of the time.

Only reusable modelforms + generic views really redeem them in my eyes.

The ORM is enjoyable but terrible for doing mass migrations. I've had to do some pretty ridiculous backflips just to get migrations to finish on our VPS.

The utter lack of real migrations. For. Fuck's. Sake. Makes it impossible to make any rapid changes to your models without thinking, "OH GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO BREAK!?!"

There are random and strange install-specific errors that will crop up and we'll either have to reinstall python/django, the OS, or ignore it and trudge on.

And there won't be any mentions of said problems on the mailing list to speak of either. (These kinds of things have occurred on OS X and Win32 both, so don't start pointing fingers.)

The incredible awkwardness of AJAX in Django. Utterly useless. It apparently suited Jacob and Adrian to pretend javascript didn't exist in their world.

It's opaque, doesn't support multiple databases, doesn't support non-relational databases, and it's nearly impossible to modify/rip out any given portion of the framework. It's the epitome of what people hate about full'ish stack frameworks.

I'm to the point where I no longer feel Django is saving me any time. The crippling of templates doesn't create a substantial separation of duties at work because I work with incompetents. Instead I'm left with crippled templates and whiny coworkers.

I'd rather work with Werkzeug/Web.py/Sinatra/Rails at this point. At least Rails was designed to be modular, allowing me to rip the parts I don't like out.

kaveri3• 16 years ago

Django != Python and Rails != Ruby. There are other solutions in either language that might suit your project better.

alnayyir6• 16 years ago

>There are other solutions in either language that might suit your project better.

What I use at work isn't up to me. I'm paid to work, not whine and whinge about the spade in my hand.

zephyrfalcon• 16 years ago

Either one is fine. They are both dynamic and flexible languages, mature, have powerful web frameworks, and fairly large library repositories.

The choice is more a matter of preference. Python generally encourages you to do "the right thing". Ruby offers more room for doing things the way you like them.

icey• 16 years ago

Write some scripts in both. If you already know a few languages, it's pretty easy to pick up the basics.

After that, pick the one you enjoyed more. They're essentially equivalent at this time.

blasdel• 16 years ago

Whether you pick Python or Ruby, you should try to avoid diving right into Django or Rails.

Work through Mark Pilgrim's "Dive Into Python" or _why's "Poignant Guide to Ruby".

If you want to write a web app, start with Google AppEngine w/ it's webapp framework, or Heroku w/ Sinatra.

joevandyk• 16 years ago

This! If you are doing Ruby, definitely start with Heroku and Sinatra. It's very simple, clean, and an excellent starting point.

You can move to Rails once you got the basics of Ruby down -- Rails will make a lot more sense then.

davidnelson2• 16 years ago

python for sure. you can use it with app engine, whereas ruby on the app engine jvm is less mature.

take a look at some source code here to help you get started:

http://developeradvocate.appspot.com/id/1005/AppEngineBlog-(...

http://code.google.com/p/appengineblogsoftware/source/browse...

davidnelson2• 16 years ago

I come from a c# and php background and don't know ruby, for what it's worth.

megaman821• 16 years ago

It is one of those things were you take about 20 minutes with each language and see which one fits you better.

Python's philosophy is there should only be one obvious way to express something.

Ruby's philosophy is the language should be expressive enough that you can express something in a way that makes sense to you.

The biggest advantage Python has over Ruby is its wealth of scientific libraries, but that may not matter to you much as a web developer.

CoryMathews• 16 years ago

python. coming from almost the same background python was easier, ruby was just.. annoying, its all hype and IMO will soon crash.

Also I really like the speed at which you can write up a python script to solve a problem.

Soleone• 16 years ago

Things I love about Ruby (I have not used Python yet):

- everything is an object, so you can e.g. store code in a Proc to execute it later or add new methods to Numbers (e.g. 1.kilobyte => 1024)

- very clean syntax and expressive method names means you don't need to document much, it's pretty obvious most of the time (e.g. 3.times do print "ho" * 3 end => "hohoho")

- very flexible, allows nice DSLs that read a lot like english (e.g. Rails or RSpec)

- interesting community with lots of free material (e.g. _why's poignant guide, railscasts.com, therubyshow.com, ...)

I'm sure Python is pretty cool as well, but from all I've heard (I had the same question a while ago) Ruby seems to fit me better with its "more fun and freedom" philosophy.

kickoff• 16 years ago

Python

CyberFonic• 16 years ago

For what it's worth, several universities have chosen Python to teach introductory CS rather than Lisp/Scheme. Also NASA, Industrial Light and Magic, Disney, etc have chosen Python. But as others have pointed out, try out both and see which one feels more "natural" to you. For me, Python was like "executable pseudo code" and I found I could grok the batteries included libraries much better than anything that Ruby had to offer at the time (about v2.1 vintage).

Ask HN: What should I learn next: Ruby or Python ?

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