[touchofevil]

Wouldn't Python/Django make more sense in 2018 considering that Python could be used for data science and machine learning? I realize this is a Python vs Ruby question, but if you didn't know either Python or Ruby and were trying to pick between Django and Rails for a project, wouldn't you pick Django in 2018 due to future data science and machine learning opportunities?

[mod]

No. Learning Python is quick and simple compared to learning data science or machine learning.

Knowing Python and Django (which I do) does not afford you any ability do to those things.

[touchofevil]

Interesting. I assumed that spending more time working with Python would be beneficial, but I guess it's not a big deal. This is great to know, as I've been resistant to starting with Ruby/Rails for the reason I described. Thanks!

[mod]

Learning Ruby would give you a big leg up over starting from scratch learning Python.

I don't know if you are familiar with any programming languages at all, but many skills translate cross-language...the paradigms are the same. Particularly with Ruby & Python which are very similar languages. They're good at the same things, by and large.

Taking your Ruby skills over to Python will be a matter of "google: [python thing] in ruby".

For a specific example, Python has a unique thing called "list comprehensions". Using that google string you can get some great ideas about replicating that functionality in Ruby.

Anyway, on a grander scale, picking up new languages is the easy part of programming--even when they're not so similar.

Best of luck!

[hamandcheese]

I don’t do machine learning or data science, so I’m assuming here, but I would imagine whatever you end up doing would be en entirely different service than your web stack and could be whatever language you wanted.

[hamandcheese]

Merely knowing python does not a data scientist make.

[touchofevil]

Of course, but wouldn't one be better preparing themselves for data science by working with python/django on a web app vs working with Ruby/Rails?

[hamandcheese]

I think knowing python is just a small part. So yes, it would help, just not enough for it to matter (unless you know up front that you want to do these things).

[Scarbutt]

Picking the basics or just enough python shouldn't take long(a couple of days?) for a intermediate programmer.