[tommy_m]

I am in the exact same situation. I know Ruby, as my first language, but keep running into scientific applications where Python or R is used. The languages are so similar, it is pretty easy to move between the two at a superficial level, but does take away some bandwidth trying to stay current in them both. It seems that if you are going to do web based work, Ruby is a good choice, but it you are going to be actively involved in non-weby stuff, Python is a better choice. I say this as a dedicated Ruby guy, who would rather stay with it, but am being pushed into more and more Python....

[MrBra]

I know nothing about scientific computing, but I am sure you took a look at this,right? http://sciruby.com/ It goes like: " Ruby has for some time had no equivalent to the beautifully constructed NumPy, SciPy, and matplotlib libraries for Python. We believe that the time for a Ruby science and visualization package has come..." But status is pre-alpha, last commit 7 months ago... so dunno how much it can help...

[untothebreach]

I don't know much about that project, other than the fact that it isn't mature yet. In my comments above, I didn't mean that Ruby _didn't_ have any libraries focused on scientific computing, just that they didn't have the community and tools for scientific computing that Python has.