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by upupandup 1458 days ago
it used to be that Ruby was more popular but seems like Python ultimately eclipsed it. One thing that really hurt Ruby was there was just way too many ways to accomplish the same thing and there were lot of opinions and ego around which was better where as Python has established standards like PEP8 that champions readability above all
2 comments
fny 1458 days ago
There are definitely as many ways to do things in Python if not more... I've worked extensively in both languages. Frankly, the Python ecosystem is a lot more complex to navigate (dependency management is a nightmare) and much less friendly.

I think the biggest difference is (1) Python more institutional backing (2) Python is taught in academic settings (3) Python has more robust scientific computing (4) Node stole Ruby's thunder in the web application space (5) Python works out of the box on Windows.

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Trasmatta 1458 days ago
> dependency management is a nightmare

I don't know if it's better these days, but dependency management was one of the reasons I stuck with Ruby over Python back in the early 2010's. I never had issues with it in Ruby, but was constantly battling with dependency management in Python.

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jjgreen 1458 days ago
> I don't know if it's better these days

It's not

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SoleilAbsolu 1458 days ago
I think #5 is huge, until Windows Subsystem for Linux came out there was no easy way to compile all needed gems on Windows. Most Ruby/Rails tutorials assumed you were running *nix and DHH's dismissive attitude to Windows didn't help. Git Bash for Windows bridged some of the gap and probably Cygwin did the rest, but batteries were not included for Ruby on the most popular OS.
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petercooper 1458 days ago
One thing that really hurt Ruby was there was just way too many ways to accomplish the same thing

I dunno, to me it feels like that's why Python won. Python is more pragmatic, flexible, less wedded to ideals, and, I think, these things allowed it to pick up a lot of entry level developer attention especially in areas like data journalism, data science, ML, etc. which stole a lot of Ruby's "good for beginners" thunder. This is now paying dividends as all those new folks have cemented Python's now bread and butter projects like PyTorch as must-have skills. Ruby not ever really caring about Windows didn't help either.

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