[luibelgo]

Languages look similar, but Python value resides in the vast amount of libraries available to do data processing and ML. Most of them backed by C implementations under the hood.

[cutler]

There's nothing about Python, compared with Ruby, that gives it any advantage, numerics or otherwise. Ruby's C ffi is just as powerful as Python's. It's all just a first mover phenomenon. Python is the VHS of programming languages.

[luibelgo]

Community matters. In this case Python community around data science is huge.

[cutler]

PHP, JS and Python all have great communities but they're still crappy languages.

[Grimm1]

Exactly, and though Ruby has an FFI (Foreign Function Interface) similar libraries were not created and Ruby was pigeon holed as a language you build CRUD apps in.

[rmetzler]

There is a dev adding Ruby bindings via FFI to ML libs. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a large community (yet).

I don't do any ML and don't know much about it, but the Elixir / Phoenix people around José Valim now build ML software (nx, livebook) and I'm excited for this.

[pjmlp]

And those libraries can actually be used from any language with FFI capabilities.

So whatever headstart Python might have in machine learning, it is only a matter of time until all major languages support the same C, C++ and Fortran libraries.

The only things holding it, are having anyone that cares enough to write those bindings, and the culture of which languages are accepted when submiting papers.