I don’t know either. I do know of several posters on the XP
lists, however, who have switched from Python to Ruby, and
I doubt that it was corporate pressure in any of their cases.If you’re interested (which most of the posters here are not -
I’m certainly not) you might check with them. I’m sure Phlip, for
one, would be more than happy to say why he switched, and what
made the difference.John Roth
Hi, JR!
I got paid to research in Python, for a while, and started using Ruby
as a hobby project on the side - http://flea.sf.net
Python blocks, collections, and indentation all suck, but so do C++
equivalents, and I still use the latter as a hobby language, too.
If you were to instrument my physical responses and typing rate while
coding using Python and Test Driven Development, and compare them to
my responses using Ruby, you’d get close to assessing the subjective
reason I ain’t going back.
And I would be interested to see such a comparison between Ruby and
Smalltalk. I can’t use the latter, but I suspect Ruby exceeds its
expressiveness, but without the weird syntax.
To reveal objective reasons would lead to tired old threads like this
one. I could never write a paragraph expressing why Ruby is better, or
why this is not a personal taste thing.
The /Programming Ruby/ book says, “Ruby stays out of your way”. I know
Python tried to be like that too, but it left in so many little
irritations.
Finally, my TFUI book will use Ruby for its core samples, but
generally written as expressively as possible, so that Pythonics and
others can read it.
I consider this a great improvement over similar books that use that
abomination Java. The elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed
of Smalltalk!