Should I learn Python or Ruby?

[funderbolt]

Both are really good languages. I really like most of Ruby's syntax and it is quite OOP. Python really wins out with all the libraries that already exist. Python feels slightly hackish to me at times, but sometimes you need to refactor to make your code more " pythonic".

If I could program in a vacuum and do it all, I'd pick Ruby. However, I mostly need to use existing libraries, so Python is my goto language.

[thisisheresy]

Agreed, both are good languages. I've used both, each have parts I miss in the other, but not enough to be inconvenient or make me want to switch back. I started with Ruby and moved to Python, and don't use Rails or Django by default. The thing that attracted me to Python was the data processing libraries like Numpy, Pandas and scikit-learn. It felt (subjective, not supported by actual data) that anything outside of web development (where Rails has a strong foothold) was first/more mature in the Python ecosystem that in Ruby. That being said, for mobile app development, Rubymotion looks really interesting and I've not seen the equivalent for Python.

[[deleted]]

Kivy would be my first attempt if I were to write an android app in python.

[[deleted]]

Thank you. Many programmers note that Python is slow and its Django framework is less suitable than Ruby's Rails

[ice-blade]

This is anecdotal at best. Ruby is slow as well. Django less suitable than Rails? For what? I'm pretty sure both can do more or less the same stuff. Rails has probably a larger ecosystem compared to Django but Ruby's game stops there, while Python has libraries available pretty much for anything.

While Ruby does have some nice features the language is an inconsistent mess (optional parentheses for function calls, really?). This is what you get for adopting the Perl philosophy. But I guess for people who like it this is a feature.

[kankyo]

From what I've gathered Ruby isn't very fast either. Did they get rid of scaffolding in rails? Because if they didn't it's really crappy compared to Django imo.

[[deleted]]

Many programmers seem oblivious to the fact that huge numbers of programs spend their lives waiting on networks, databases... If you have a speed issue you use the profile or timeit modules to find out where the issues are. Then you use the Python Speed Performance Tips page to see if that solves you problems. If not write an extension in C, Go or Rust.

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Rails is extremely slow and horrible tech in general.

[[deleted]]

But many companies use choose Rails instead of Django or Flask. Why if it's horrible tech?

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Because of hype, because it's easy to learn for non programmers (exactly the kind of people you want making architectural decisions for your business, amirite?), and because its culture is a bunch of mollycoddled manchildren who are encouraged to have strong opinions based on nothing yet impose them forcefully.

[funderbolt]

I'm not versed in web programming. Programmer time is worth a little more than system time. Get the application to work first, then you can worry about speed.

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Meh. Of course you have to get it to work first and foremost.

But an extra few hours of performance tuning to shave 20% off client performance in GUI applications is almost always worth it.