[mikeocool]

Stop debating whether Ruby or Python is better and learn both. They're both great languages and they're super similar, so once you've used an in-depth technique like the one outlined in the article to learn one, you can learn the other super easily in a lot less time.

If you know both, you can make an informed decision and choose the right tool. Even if you're using Django to write your webapp, you'll be able to use Chef for configuration management. If you're about to embark on writing a new project, you can choose the language that has the most mature libraries for your problem domain.

You also won't have to rely on all of the apparently subjective things people say in comment threads about which language is better when choosing one.

While you're at stop saying how bad C/C++/Java/Scheme/PHP/javascript/haskell/C#/Cobol and learn those too (ok, maybe not Cobol).

Remember a few years ago when everyone was all hating on javascript? Now, all of sudden it's the awesome lingua franca of programmers and the language hasn't changed a bit. The perception changed because some smart people learned its strengths and wrote good libraries and runtimes based on those.