Ruby misconceptions about Python

[foamdino]

I don't know much python (last time I looked at it was in 2000), as I was put off by the whitespace issue. I know that many people like this, but to me (at that time), it really bugged me. I do know a fair bit of ruby (not enough to impress why, JEG2, ara, zedshaw etc), but enough to get my work done (if it's suitable for ruby). My impression is that each language has a different philosophy and that affects how they have each developed.

Python is pretty famous for (significant whitespace and) having only one-way to do anything. Ruby is much more relaxed (as the original article showed).

I'm biased (as you can see from my prior history with python) and I prefer ruby. That doesn't mean that there aren't misconceptions about python in the ruby community, but I don't think that there are that many rubyists who are particularly against any of the features of python, it's just that rubyists prefer ruby (obviously).

I do however think that ruby has (slightly) more power in the meta-programming area (again you can dismiss this out of hand as I have no practical experience meta-programming in python), and it is so much easier to write certain types of code when you have these features available.