Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xivusr 904 days ago
I’d genuinely love to hear more about what you find difficult about Ruby coming from a heavier Python or NodeJS background.

For me, coming from more of a Ruby background, I found Python and Node to not be too hard to understand, and my only nitpick would be on how eggs/packages were managed and dealing with dependancies.

In particular, Python dependancies compared to Ruby dependancies were more challenging initially for me. I’ve grown to appreciate Python indents and find it nice to read, but that was also annoying at first.

2 comments

I’m primarily a Ruby dev, but still find most languages easier to work with.

Ruby itself is not the issue. The way people and frameworks (looking at you Rails) abuse its mechanics in pursuit of “clean code” drives me crazy. An incredible number of things are downright challenging to debug because of the insane flexibility of Ruby.

Not op but compared with Python it's heavier in the syntax department. You would have an easier time going in the other direction and encounter less situations where you have to stop and think about what to use in which situation while learning.
Python has far more custom syntax than Ruby. In Ruby an elegant syntax like blocks solves many problems, in Python each problem has custom syntax.
Quick, which language is this written in?

a = [1,2,3,4]

for b in a

  print(b)
end
Here's some advice. If you want to make a point, make it clear and direct. No one knows what point you are trying to make here.
Here's some advice - don't give unsolicited advice.
end is ruby :)

But you would write `[1, 2, 3, 4].each { |n| print(n) }`