How's ruby compare to it older brother python

ruby-talk
21

Why is this trotted out every time? I guarentee that my code will look
perfectly fine in your editor. I cannot guarentee the reverse as while you
might have a penchant for tabs I do not. I am not alone in that regard.
Here’s a snippet from the Python style guide:

Tabs or Spaces?
Never mix tabs and spaces. The most popular way of indenting Python is with
spaces only. The second-most popular way is with tabs only. Code indented with
a mixture of tabs and spaces should be converted to using spaces exclusively.
(In Emacs, select the whole buffer and hit ESC-x untabify.) When invoking the
python command line interpreter with the -t option, it issues warnings about
code that illegally mixes tabs and spaces. When using -tt these warnings
become errors. These options are highly recommended!

So unless your tab setting is 0 syntactically significant pieces of code

should always have a different indention level. Furthermore if the
program(mers) follow the style guide then that is a non-issue.

···

On 2004-04-26, Phil Tomson ptkwt@aracnet.com wrote:

Well, there is one big difference syntactically: Python uses indentation
as syntax and Ruby doesn’t. Personally I don’t prefer Python’s
‘indentation-as-syntax’ since it means that syntactically significant
pieces of my code are invisible and if the tab settings in my editor are
not the same as yours it can make it difficult to share code (or even

–
Steve C. Lamb | I’m your priest, I’m your shrink, I’m your
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
-------------------------------±--------------------------------------------

22

I totally agree.

But if your editor cannot manage “end” and indent for
you, at least your pretty-printer can. I find it a great
consolation to tailor my pretty-printer to display the
code with my preferred syntax/style.

As an example, mime transforms hash of symbols to display them
using Ruby 2’s syntax:
{ :a => “1”, :b => “2”, :c => “3”} is displayed as:
{ a: “1”, b: “2”, c: “3” }
I get today some of the benefits of tomorrow :wink:

For as unobtrusive as it is today, “end”, is still something
that annoy some people (not me). It is a shame that {} cannot be used
instead because supporting {} would attract more people to Ruby than
any other feature (my guess) !

In addition to indentation and closing blocks, a decent editor should
handle folding (more and more frequently done) and hiding (filtering out
some part of the code, comments for example).

I still wonder why most editors don’t try to guess my indentation
style (which is of 2 chars) looking at the code (an either using
the code’s style or my imposed one, that way tab could stay 8 as
ANSI defined).

Jean-Hugues

···

At 03:29 27/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

“Phil Tomson” ptkwt@aracnet.com wrote in message
news:c6jg7404m@enews4.newsguy.com…

In article 108pvmgl0h7m3ea@news.supernews.com,
John Roth newsgroups@jhrothjr.com wrote:

“Hunn E. Balsiche” hunnebal@yahoo.com wrote in message
news:c6ich0$c5mee$1@ID-205437.news.uni-berlin.de…

in term of its OO features, syntax consistencies, ease of use, and
their
development progress. I have not use python but heard about it quite
often;
and ruby, is it mature enough to be use for developing serious
application,
e.g web application as it has not many features in it yet.

As another poster has mentioned, Ruby is more closely related
to Perl than to Python. While I don’t use it, people I respect who
have moved to Ruby say it has a couple of real killer features;
in particular the way blocks and the pervasive use of the visitor
pattern come together change the way one writes programs for
the better.

As far as syntax is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be a
huge amount of difference. Syntax is syntax, and every language
has it’s little pecularities.

Well, there is one big difference syntactically: Python uses indentation
as syntax and Ruby doesn’t. Personally I don’t prefer Python’s
‘indentation-as-syntax’ since it means that syntactically significant
pieces of my code are invisible and if the tab settings in my editor are
not the same as yours it can make it difficult to share code (or even
worse, it might look like everything is OK when we share code, but the
code which looks exactly the same to each of us, might not be depending
on how tabs are or are not expanded). It would also seem to be a pain for
cutting & pasting code as well.

As I said in another post, indentation is the reason I learned
Python in the first place, but it’s not the reason I stay with
the language. In fact, I’ve come to the very heretical view
that the indentation sensitivity is a language design mistake.
It should be the editor’s job to handle that level of detail in
a manner that the developer finds workable.

One reason I think it’s a language design mistake is that
it’s not recursive. That is, it’s not possible to shift from
expression level indentation back to statement level
indentation without major disruptions. This is needed for
embedded blocks.

I think Ruby has a reasonable middle ground here: its use of
‘end’ is fairly unobtrusive compared to, for example, C, C++,
C# or Java. Even so, I think that a reasonable programming
editor would get them out of my face while I was programming.

The tab issue is one of those relatively inconsequential things
that people seem to love to argue about: I’d rather be able to
tell the editor how I want the program formatted, and have done
with it.

23

Hello Dave,

In article <491499718.20040426112927@scriptolutions.com>,
: This is something that really really gives ruby a bad reputation. I've
: never seen so many instable servers in other communities.
[...]
: I never had problems like this when searching for python or php
: information.

http://search.python.org/

You sure complain a lot, but I never see you doing anything to help.

Which is so old that even google finds no reference to this site.
The official link is Welcome to Python.org

And i can't do anything more then reporting a non responding server to
the webmaster (if i know his email). Believe me i do this regularly,
when i look for updates of the Arachno Ruby Distribution. But when
i read comments "like RAA is upgrading, we expect to be online again in
two weeks", then i don't know what i should say.

···

Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@scriptolutions.com> wrote:

--
Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com
CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's

24

Simply make a killfile entry and move on.

···

Michele Dondi bik.mido@tiscalinet.it wrote:

ùOn Mon, 26 Apr 2004 16:55:02 -0400, “Ruby Tuesdays”
NoSpamPlease_rubytuzdaiz@yahoo.com wrote:

Would this super perl program of yours can convert the massive amount of
perl script to ruby or python?

If it could, it would be great so ruby/python programmers does not have to
learn those cryptic perl-ish syntax and the non-OOish scripting language.

Huh?!?

–
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
tadmc@augustmail.com Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas

25

I don’t really mind this type of question a whole lot, but it does occur a
lot. Personally, I think it’s best dealt with links to existing discussions.

There’s no need to discuss this topic over and over when there are archives
where it has all been said. It doesn’t take any longer to read the archives
than it does to read new posts saying the same things.

Plus this particular topic attracts more trolling than the average ruby-talk
thread, so they tend to grow huge with people making personal attacks at each
other.

I don’t really think flaming the question was entirely appropriate, but
perhaps someone should collect a bunch of links to old ruby-talk posts and
other resources so we can have a canned response to this topic and leave it
at that.

  • Dan
26

Cameron Laird wrote:

.
It’s not just that “You won’t know until you try” (“is it better
to have children, or join the monastery?”); it’s that you won’t
know until you try, and it’s inexpensive to try! It’s eminently
feasible to gain experience in either language with a few hours (!)
of work, as opposed to the weeks that must precede enlightenment
about, say, J2EE servers.

Of course, those of us who are more into the Complete Waste Of Time [TM]
theory of selecting software components will simply give you the bottom
line:

  • If you like Perl, you’ll like Ruby. If you think Perl is a bletcherous
    hack, you’ll like Python.
  • The Python community dwarfs the Ruby community.
  • Both languages are slow.
  • Python has lotsa libraries but not everything. Ask here regarding your
    specific needs. Even if Python were the most elegant language in the world,
    that’s not useful if you must write everything from scratch and don’t have
    time to do it.

This is the kind of information you get by simply asking people and reading
lotsa archives. Some people say “Try it yourself!” is the only way to
learn. They are wrong, and they often don’t value people’s time. You
really can rely on other people’s reported experiences of the nuclear
mushroom cloud exploding over the horizon. It is not strictly necessary to
walk into Ground Zero yourself.

Now, if you’re going to argue “it’s just a little Ruby code…” why don’t
you try multiplying that by all the languages in the comp.lang.* hierarchy
that you could potentially be selecting from? Take a spin by the Language
Shootouts if you want to spin your head some more.
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
http://dada.perl.it/shootout/
You need a filter of some kind for cutting down the options. I suggest
asking people, and seeing what languages actually got used for jobs relevant
to your software problem / industry.

I’m waiting for someone to say that my participation in this thread
constitutes trolling. I find it amusing that the boundary between
“intelligent language discussion” and “trolling” is mainly a matter of who
likes who, not the content. And, this is all I have to say on the subject,
so have fun.

···

–
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

“Troll” - (n.) Anything you don’t like.
Usage: “He’s just a troll.”

27

Richard Kilmer wrote:

RubyForge is down sometimes (though rarely), but its a far better
repository (resource-wise) than SourceForge for Ruby projects. We have
tried to make sure the resource(s) we provide this community (for free)
meet the community’s need for a repository of projects that are
Ruby-centric, and that we (Tom mostly) are responsive to our user’s
needs. If you have something specific to discuss with us regarding
RubyForge’s usability, please let us know here:

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=5

Thanks,

-rich

I’ll a lot farther than this…

I find that most of the time (not all, though) SourceForge is dog-slow! And,
conversely, most of the time (not all) RubyForge is very responsive.

Good work guys!

Curt

28

Jean-Hugues ROBERT:

In addition to indentation and closing blocks, a decent editor should
handle folding (more and more frequently done) and hiding (filtering out
some part of the code, comments for example).

Of course, comments are a nuisance to write, ugly, and often out of date.
Scintilla has a ‘visible’ attribute on styles that allows you to hide these
annoyances and cursor over them quickly. It is also available as an
(undocumented!) notvisible attribute in SciTE:
style.ruby.1=fore:#007F00,$(font.comment),notvisible
Unfortunately this does not remove the new lines and remnant whitespace
from comment sections.

Neil

29

Oh please, no {}s. “end” is one of the things I love about Ruby.

There is some awesome discussions out there on Python vs. Ruby that
people provided links to. They are a great catalyst for language
philosophy and design discussions, since the languages are so close yet
so different. Unfortunately, I’m now trying to also learn Smalltalk,
Lisp, Scheme, and Haskell. Hyperlinks are evil!

Nick

···

On Apr 27, 2004, at 1:12 AM, Jean-Hugues ROBERT wrote:

At 03:29 27/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

“Phil Tomson” ptkwt@aracnet.com wrote in message
news:c6jg7404m@enews4.newsguy.com…

In article 108pvmgl0h7m3ea@news.supernews.com,
John Roth newsgroups@jhrothjr.com wrote:

“Hunn E. Balsiche” hunnebal@yahoo.com wrote in message
news:c6ich0$c5mee$1@ID-205437.news.uni-berlin.de…

in term of its OO features, syntax consistencies, ease of use,
and
their
development progress. I have not use python but heard about it
quite
often;
and ruby, is it mature enough to be use for developing serious
application,
e.g web application as it has not many features in it yet.

As another poster has mentioned, Ruby is more closely related
to Perl than to Python. While I don’t use it, people I respect who
have moved to Ruby say it has a couple of real killer features;
in particular the way blocks and the pervasive use of the visitor
pattern come together change the way one writes programs for
the better.

As far as syntax is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be a
huge amount of difference. Syntax is syntax, and every language
has it’s little pecularities.

Well, there is one big difference syntactically: Python uses
indentation
as syntax and Ruby doesn’t. Personally I don’t prefer Python’s
‘indentation-as-syntax’ since it means that syntactically
significant
pieces of my code are invisible and if the tab settings in my
editor are
not the same as yours it can make it difficult to share code (or
even
worse, it might look like everything is OK when we share code, but
the
code which looks exactly the same to each of us, might not be
depending
on how tabs are or are not expanded). It would also seem to be a
pain for
cutting & pasting code as well.

As I said in another post, indentation is the reason I learned
Python in the first place, but it’s not the reason I stay with
the language. In fact, I’ve come to the very heretical view
that the indentation sensitivity is a language design mistake.
It should be the editor’s job to handle that level of detail in
a manner that the developer finds workable.

One reason I think it’s a language design mistake is that
it’s not recursive. That is, it’s not possible to shift from
expression level indentation back to statement level
indentation without major disruptions. This is needed for
embedded blocks.

I think Ruby has a reasonable middle ground here: its use of
‘end’ is fairly unobtrusive compared to, for example, C, C++,
C# or Java. Even so, I think that a reasonable programming
editor would get them out of my face while I was programming.

The tab issue is one of those relatively inconsequential things
that people seem to love to argue about: I’d rather be able to
tell the editor how I want the program formatted, and have done
with it.

I totally agree.

But if your editor cannot manage “end” and indent for
you, at least your pretty-printer can. I find it a great
consolation to tailor my pretty-printer to display the
code with my preferred syntax/style.

As an example, mime transforms hash of symbols to display them
using Ruby 2’s syntax:
{ :a => “1”, :b => “2”, :c => “3”} is displayed as:
{ a: “1”, b: “2”, c: “3” }
I get today some of the benefits of tomorrow :wink:

For as unobtrusive as it is today, “end”, is still something
that annoy some people (not me). It is a shame that {} cannot be used
instead because supporting {} would attract more people to Ruby than
any other feature (my guess) !

In addition to indentation and closing blocks, a decent editor should
handle folding (more and more frequently done) and hiding (filtering
out
some part of the code, comments for example).

I still wonder why most editors don’t try to guess my indentation
style (which is of 2 chars) looking at the code (an either using
the code’s style or my imposed one, that way tab could stay 8 as
ANSI defined).

Jean-Hugues

30

Amen, brother.

“Dan Doel” djd15@po.cwru.edu wrote in message
news:200404272217.26571.djd15@po.cwru.edu…

I don’t really mind this type of question a whole lot, but it does occur a
lot. Personally, I think it’s best dealt with links to existing
discussions.

There’s no need to discuss this topic over and over when there are
archives
where it has all been said. It doesn’t take any longer to read the
archives
than it does to read new posts saying the same things.

Plus this particular topic attracts more trolling than the average
ruby-talk
thread, so they tend to grow huge with people making personal attacks at
each
other.

I don’t really think flaming the question was entirely appropriate, but
perhaps someone should collect a bunch of links to old ruby-talk posts and
other resources so we can have a canned response to this topic and leave
it

···

at that.

  • Dan
31

In article c6jmhh$cr0r2$1@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de,

Cameron Laird wrote:

.
It’s not just that “You won’t know until you try” (“is it better
to have children, or join the monastery?”); it’s that you won’t
know until you try, and it’s inexpensive to try! It’s eminently
feasible to gain experience in either language with a few hours (!)
of work, as opposed to the weeks that must precede enlightenment
about, say, J2EE servers.

Of course, those of us who are more into the Complete Waste Of Time [TM]
theory of selecting software components will simply give you the bottom
line:

  • If you like Perl, you’ll like Ruby. If you think Perl is a bletcherous
    hack, you’ll like Python.
  • The Python community dwarfs the Ruby community.
  • Both languages are slow.
  • Python has lotsa libraries but not everything. Ask here regarding your
    specific needs. Even if Python were the most elegant language in the world,
    that’s not useful if you must write everything from scratch and don’t have
    time to do it.

This is the kind of information you get by simply asking people and reading
lotsa archives. Some people say “Try it yourself!” is the only way to
learn. They are wrong, and they often don’t value people’s time. You
really can rely on other people’s reported experiences of the nuclear
mushroom cloud exploding over the horizon. It is not strictly necessary to
walk into Ground Zero yourself.

Now, if you’re going to argue “it’s just a little Ruby code…” why don’t
you try multiplying that by all the languages in the comp.lang.* hierarchy
that you could potentially be selecting from? Take a spin by the Language
Shootouts if you want to spin your head some more.
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
http://dada.perl.it/shootout/
You need a filter of some kind for cutting down the options. I suggest
asking people, and seeing what languages actually got used for jobs relevant
to your software problem / industry.

It seems as though he has already done this. He was interested in Ruby
and Python (N=2). From there a couple of people (including myself)
suggested that he make the determination about which to study indepth by
actually doing a bit of coding in both languages. Spending a day or two
on this exercise doesn’t seem excessive if you’re serious about selecting
your ‘next language’ to learn in depth.

Phil

···

Brandon J. Van Every try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname@yahoo.com wrote:

32

“Brandon J. Van Every” wrote:

  • Python has lotsa libraries but not everything. Ask here regarding
    your specific needs. Even if Python were the most elegant language in
    the world, that’s not useful if you must write everything from scratch
    and don’t have time to do it.

Pay close attention to this passage; it’s relevant below.

This is the kind of information you get by simply asking people and
reading
lotsa archives. Some people say “Try it yourself!” is the only way to
learn. They are wrong, and they often don’t value people’s time.

“Try it yourself” is certainly not the only way to learn, but it should
be a more than sufficient one for a self-proclaimed accomplished
programmer. Certainly it better values other people’s time in order to
do the research you can do on your own and then come to them with any
additional – far more intelligent – questions you might have, rather
than punting on them and expecting them to do all your research for you.

Take a spin by the Language
Shootouts if you want to spin your head some more.
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/
http://dada.perl.it/shootout/
You need a filter of some kind for cutting down the options.

Above you say that what’s most highly valued is development time
(“that’s not useful if you must write everything from scratch and don’t
have time to do it”). So why are you referencing a shootout page that
characterizes only the speed at which programs execute, without any
information about how hard each program was to write? You’re telling
someone to value their own development time, and then pointing them to
something totally irrelevant to that point.

I’m waiting for someone to say that my participation in this thread
constitutes trolling.

Zzzzzzzz.

···

–
__ Erik Max Francis && max@alcyone.com && Erik Max Francis
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
__/ Money talks / But love is for real / And you know that
– Neneh Cherry

33

I agree.

  • If you like Smalltalk semantic, you’ll like Ruby (they are similar)
  • If you don’t like Smalltalk syntax, you’ll like Ruby’s one (less weird)

Now, about performance and librairies: There has been some talk on this
list about something very promising, but proprietary so far, that’s the
component model of (Microsoft supported but Ecma endorsed) CLI (.NET).

That beast helps a lot to reuse component X in language Y from language
Z. There is a Ruby/.NET bridge already: http://www.saltypickle.com/RubyDotNet
but I am yet to evaluate it. Components is the major event of the last
10 years in industrial software (OO was for the previous decade).

I am developing a large piece of software in Ruby and I am betting that
by the time it is released:

  • There will be a solution to speed things in Ruby (without C coding)
  • Some component framework will be available cross-platform.

On the other hand, if I were to release today… I suppose Groovy&Java
would have been a safer choice.

Yours,

Jean-Hugues

···

At 04:09 27/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

Cameron Laird wrote:

  • If you like Perl, you’ll like Ruby. If you think Perl is a bletcherous
    hack, you’ll like Python.
  • The Python community dwarfs the Ruby community.
  • Both languages are slow.
  • Python has lotsa libraries but not everything. Ask here regarding your
    specific needs. Even if Python were the most elegant language in the world,
    that’s not useful if you must write everything from scratch and don’t have
    time to do it.
    <…>
    Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
    Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
34

Jean-Hugues ROBERT:

In addition to indentation and closing blocks, a decent editor should
handle folding (more and more frequently done) and hiding (filtering out
some part of the code, comments for example).

Of course, comments are a nuisance to write, ugly, and often out of date.

It is not what I meant… I feel like comments is “help” to understand the
code. If you understand, you don’t need the comment. If you don’t, you
are glad it is here.

Same for assertions.

Same for debug traces.

Scintilla has a ‘visible’ attribute on styles that allows you to hide these
annoyances and cursor over them quickly. It is also available as an
(undocumented!) notvisible attribute in SciTE:
style.ruby.1=fore:#007F00,$(font.comment),notvisible
Unfortunately this does not remove the new lines and remnant whitespace
from comment sections. Neil.

That’s interesting. I am currently using Mondrian (beta testing phase). I
think Oliver is using scintilla. Maybe he can implement a simple checkbox
to “hide” comments (some extra newline won’t hurt too much I hope).

Thanks.

Jean-Hugues

···

At 19:34 27/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

35

I agree that flaming the question is not appropriate and its also bad for
the Ruby community in general. One of the things that attracted to me to
the Ruby language was the open-mindedness of the list members and the
friendliness of the Ruby community. One of the things that amazed me about
the Ruby community (at least in the past) was that they almost never flamed
people who discussed the advantages of other languages over Ruby. In fact
sometimes they even admitted certain languages had advantages over Ruby. I
also thought Matz was very humble and unassuming (maybe because he is
Japanese) considering that he is the creator of the language. In fact I
don’t think I have ever heard Matz flame anyone. On the other hand the
exact opposite is true of the Python list. Guido has flamed people who
asked reasonable questions and based on my limited experience on the Python
list I found him incredibly rude. Additionally the Pythonistas in general
appear to me to be very narrow minded and intolerant. One reason why I have
avoided learning Lisp is that the Lispers are unbelievebly intolerant of
anyone questioning their language. It saddens me to see the same thing
starting to happen on the Ruby list.

I do not agree that this topic is not appropriate to discuss. This is a
topic that ought to be rehashed periodically because the are many possible
comparisons that can be made between Python and Ruby. It is possible to
compare the languages with respect to speed, power, syntax, libraries,
community, philosophy, readability, beauty etc. Additionally both languages
are changing so there will always be new things to compare. Comparisons are
useful in general because they help us to understand a languages strengths
and weaknesses and how it can be improved in the future. Also there is no
reason a person cannot use both Ruby and Python. They are not mutually
exclusive. Knowing something about each languages strengths and weaknesses
would be helpful for deciding whether to use Python or Ruby on a given
project.

As to the question of the time wasted responding to these questions I think
that is a total red herring. If you don’t want to waste time responding,
don’t read the message or just delete it. No one is forcing anyone to do
anything. How long does it take to press the delete button? Probably less
time than it does for the guy who asked the question to search the archives
for the answer to the question. I think the real reason that people don’t
like this sort of question is that they feel it is really an attack on the
Ruby language which they take personally. I really don’t understand why
anyone would take any of these questions personally even if they are stealth
attacks on the Ruby language. Why not just answer the question
respectfully, referencing the archives if necessary and let that be the end
of it.

Regards,
Trevor

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Hilton [mailto:kenosis@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 11:44 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: How’s ruby compare to it older brother python

Amen, brother.

“Dan Doel” djd15@po.cwru.edu wrote in message
news:200404272217.26571.djd15@po.cwru.edu…

I don’t really mind this type of question a whole lot, but it does occur a
lot. Personally, I think it’s best dealt with links to existing
discussions.

There’s no need to discuss this topic over and over when there are
archives
where it has all been said. It doesn’t take any longer to read the
archives
than it does to read new posts saying the same things.

Plus this particular topic attracts more trolling than the average
ruby-talk
thread, so they tend to grow huge with people making personal attacks at
each
other.

I don’t really think flaming the question was entirely appropriate, but
perhaps someone should collect a bunch of links to old ruby-talk posts and
other resources so we can have a canned response to this topic and leave
it
at that.

  • Dan
36

Phil Tomson wrote:

In article c6jmhh$cr0r2$1@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de,
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

You need a filter of some kind for cutting down the options. I
suggest asking people, and seeing what languages actually got used
for jobs relevant to your software problem / industry.

It seems as though he has already done this.

He may very well have… I’m late to the thread. Consider it embedded
advice for anyone other than him who may be reading, now or in the future.

···

–
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

“Trollhunter” - (n.) A person who habitually accuses
people of being Trolls.

37

Hi,

I believe the answer to your question is here:
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

Life is a bitch.

Yours,

Jean-Hugues

···

At 13:50 30/04/2004 +0900, you wrote:

I agree that flaming the question is not appropriate and its also bad for
the Ruby community in general. One of the things that attracted to me to
the Ruby language was the open-mindedness of the list members and the
friendliness of the Ruby community. One of the things that amazed me about
the Ruby community (at least in the past) was that they almost never flamed
people who discussed the advantages of other languages over Ruby. In fact
sometimes they even admitted certain languages had advantages over Ruby. I
also thought Matz was very humble and unassuming (maybe because he is
Japanese) considering that he is the creator of the language. In fact I
don’t think I have ever heard Matz flame anyone. On the other hand the
exact opposite is true of the Python list. Guido has flamed people who
asked reasonable questions and based on my limited experience on the Python
list I found him incredibly rude. Additionally the Pythonistas in general
appear to me to be very narrow minded and intolerant. One reason why I have
avoided learning Lisp is that the Lispers are unbelievebly intolerant of
anyone questioning their language. It saddens me to see the same thing
starting to happen on the Ruby list.

I do not agree that this topic is not appropriate to discuss. This is a
topic that ought to be rehashed periodically because the are many possible
comparisons that can be made between Python and Ruby. It is possible to
compare the languages with respect to speed, power, syntax, libraries,
community, philosophy, readability, beauty etc. Additionally both languages
are changing so there will always be new things to compare. Comparisons are
useful in general because they help us to understand a languages strengths
and weaknesses and how it can be improved in the future. Also there is no
reason a person cannot use both Ruby and Python. They are not mutually
exclusive. Knowing something about each languages strengths and weaknesses
would be helpful for deciding whether to use Python or Ruby on a given
project.

As to the question of the time wasted responding to these questions I think
that is a total red herring. If you don’t want to waste time responding,
don’t read the message or just delete it. No one is forcing anyone to do
anything. How long does it take to press the delete button? Probably less
time than it does for the guy who asked the question to search the archives
for the answer to the question. I think the real reason that people don’t
like this sort of question is that they feel it is really an attack on the
Ruby language which they take personally. I really don’t understand why
anyone would take any of these questions personally even if they are stealth
attacks on the Ruby language. Why not just answer the question
respectfully, referencing the archives if necessary and let that be the end
of it.

Regards,
Trevor

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Hilton [mailto:kenosis@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 11:44 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: How’s ruby compare to it older brother python

Amen, brother.

“Dan Doel” djd15@po.cwru.edu wrote in message
news:200404272217.26571.djd15@po.cwru.edu…

I don’t really mind this type of question a whole lot, but it does occur a
lot. Personally, I think it’s best dealt with links to existing
discussions.

There’s no need to discuss this topic over and over when there are
archives
where it has all been said. It doesn’t take any longer to read the
archives
than it does to read new posts saying the same things.

Plus this particular topic attracts more trolling than the average
ruby-talk
thread, so they tend to grow huge with people making personal attacks at
each
other.

I don’t really think flaming the question was entirely appropriate, but
perhaps someone should collect a bunch of links to old ruby-talk posts and
other resources so we can have a canned response to this topic and leave
it
at that.

  • Dan

Web: http://hdl.handle.net/1030.37/1.1
Phone: +33 (0) 4 92 27 74 17

38

I quite agree with all of the below. As for how to work it out -
perhaps a FAQ could be written up on this regard? With regular updates
as deemed necessary. Perhaps a wiki site could be dedicated to this,
so that contributors may be added easily. Just my 0.02 units of your
favorite currency.

···

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:50:35 +0900, trevor andrade trevor.andrade@utoronto.ca wrote:

I agree that flaming the question is not appropriate and its also bad for
the Ruby community in general. One of the things that attracted to me to
the Ruby language was the open-mindedness of the list members and the
friendliness of the Ruby community. One of the things that amazed me about
the Ruby community (at least in the past) was that they almost never flamed
people who discussed the advantages of other languages over Ruby. In fact
sometimes they even admitted certain languages had advantages over Ruby. I
also thought Matz was very humble and unassuming (maybe because he is
Japanese) considering that he is the creator of the language. In fact I
don’t think I have ever heard Matz flame anyone. On the other hand the
exact opposite is true of the Python list. Guido has flamed people who
asked reasonable questions and based on my limited experience on the Python
list I found him incredibly rude. Additionally the Pythonistas in general
appear to me to be very narrow minded and intolerant. One reason why I have
avoided learning Lisp is that the Lispers are unbelievebly intolerant of
anyone questioning their language. It saddens me to see the same thing
starting to happen on the Ruby list.

I do not agree that this topic is not appropriate to discuss. This is a
topic that ought to be rehashed periodically because the are many possible
comparisons that can be made between Python and Ruby. It is possible to
compare the languages with respect to speed, power, syntax, libraries,
community, philosophy, readability, beauty etc. Additionally both languages
are changing so there will always be new things to compare. Comparisons are
useful in general because they help us to understand a languages strengths
and weaknesses and how it can be improved in the future. Also there is no
reason a person cannot use both Ruby and Python. They are not mutually
exclusive. Knowing something about each languages strengths and weaknesses
would be helpful for deciding whether to use Python or Ruby on a given
project.

As to the question of the time wasted responding to these questions I think
that is a total red herring. If you don’t want to waste time responding,
don’t read the message or just delete it. No one is forcing anyone to do
anything. How long does it take to press the delete button? Probably less
time than it does for the guy who asked the question to search the archives
for the answer to the question. I think the real reason that people don’t
like this sort of question is that they feel it is really an attack on the
Ruby language which they take personally. I really don’t understand why
anyone would take any of these questions personally even if they are stealth
attacks on the Ruby language. Why not just answer the question
respectfully, referencing the archives if necessary and let that be the end
of it.

Regards,
Trevor

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Hilton [mailto:kenosis@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 11:44 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: How’s ruby compare to it older brother python

Amen, brother.

“Dan Doel” djd15@po.cwru.edu wrote in message
news:200404272217.26571.djd15@po.cwru.edu…

I don’t really mind this type of question a whole lot, but it does occur a
lot. Personally, I think it’s best dealt with links to existing
discussions.

There’s no need to discuss this topic over and over when there are
archives
where it has all been said. It doesn’t take any longer to read the
archives
than it does to read new posts saying the same things.

Plus this particular topic attracts more trolling than the average
ruby-talk
thread, so they tend to grow huge with people making personal attacks at
each
other.

I don’t really think flaming the question was entirely appropriate, but
perhaps someone should collect a bunch of links to old ruby-talk posts and
other resources so we can have a canned response to this topic and leave
it
at that.

  • Dan
39

Trevor wrote:

I agree that flaming the question is not appropriate and its also bad
for the Ruby community in general. One of the things that attracted to
me to the Ruby language was the open-mindedness of the list members and
the friendliness of the Ruby community.

That has not changed.

[…] It saddens me to see the same thing [intolerance]
starting to happen on the Ruby list.

It is not happening.

I do not agree that this topic is not appropriate to discuss. This is a
topic that ought to be rehashed periodically because the are many
possible comparisons that can be made between Python and Ruby.

Yes, but “periodically” does not mean every month, and people are on good
ground to object to it. Repition becomes frustrating. List crowding
dilutes quality. And most of all: cross-posting is bad etiquette.
Especially when the posting shows no evidence of any research at all.
Googling “python vs ruby” brings a whole page (and probably more) of
matches. Why not read those and then ask a more interesting, targetted
question?

Do you seriously believe that objecting to this inconsiderate approach is
out of order? (I certainly didn’t see anybody “flaming the question”.
Must we really equate considered and reasonable objection with flaming?)

It is possible to compare the languages with respect to speed,
power, syntax, libraries, community, philosophy, readability,
beauty etc. […]

I completely agree (with that and the statements I snipped). I enjoy
reading language comparisons. So I go and read them, rather than spamming
newsgroups with the same old questions.

[…] I think the real reason that people don’t like this sort of
question is that they feel it is really an attack on the Ruby
language which they take personally.

There is frequent discussion of Ruby and other languages on this list.
I’ve learned heaps about other languages right here. It is tolerant,
intelligent, and targetted discussion. The most common attitude
displayed to people asking for comparisons is “try both languages and see
what you like”. Ruby zealotry has little or no place here.

I don’t believe anybody has displayed behaviour worth criticising, except
for the original poster. Most people have breached netiquette at some
point, so it is perhaps understandable. But no less frustrating for that.

Cheers,
Gavin

40

I’m not saying the topic isn’t appropriate. I don’t mind the topic, and I find
comparisons between languages interesting, and enjoy reading them. But,
looking around at ruby talk, I found clear Python vs. Ruby threads fom:

Apr 26, 2004 (this one)

Mar 28, 2004
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/95984

Feb 1, 2004
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/91151

I don’t know that Python and Ruby change so fast that they need to be
discussed anew every month. And besides, when a new Python or
Perl feature is announced, it is often talked about here, and the new
features are the only really new things to discuss. I personally find those
sorts of discussions more interesting than general "compare Ruby to Python"
threads.

Not to mention that Ruby vs. Python threads often turn more towards the
flame battles that you and I both enjoy doing without on this list. People end
up being misinformed on both ends, so they often debate on and on getting
madder and madder, and so on.

Not to mention, that whenever I think of a Python vs. Ruby thread, I’m
reminded of this past summer:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79412
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79433
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79492
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79543
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79545
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79548
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79587
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79588
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79592
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79616
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79636
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/79660

As I imagine several people here are. :slight_smile: All those threads are quite a read if
you have the time. It’s hard to believe they all occurred over 2 or 3 days.
And that was a disaster from a “no flames on ruby-talk” perspective.

You’re right, I could just mark all the messages in such a thread as read. And
maybe some people enjoy responding to these topics, so we shouldn’t stop them.
I just think that maybe it’d be good to gather together some stuff from the
archives and elsewhere so that “the answer” can just be referenced. It’d cut
down on the “Python is less OO than Ruby.” “No it’s not, and besides Ruby is
less functional.” “No it’s not…” And other arguments that come up from them
often and never really get resolved.

Maybe I’ll do it if I get bored. :slight_smile:

Cheers.

  • Dan