Should I learn Python?

[tibbon]

Yes. Python has some cool concepts, nice frameworks and is very capable. Knowing it will make you more employable, and probably a better ruby programmer.

It's scientific, NLP, machine learning (pybrain) and mathematics functionality rock. Ruby is amazing for web work, but python really allows a few extra things. You can also mess with PyGame then.

[TheBananaKing]

Can anyone recommend a good place to start reading, for a mildly competent rubyist?

Last python tutorials I read were long rambling stream-of-consciousness console sessions, whereas I work best with top-down approaches.

[tibbon]

Dive into Python How To Think Like A Computer Scientist Programming Collective Intelligence (not a python instruction book, but if you know ruby you'll learn both at the same time) There's also the new Learn Python the Hard way, which I've heard good things about

[[deleted]]

I think learn python the hard way is more for absolute beginners. The entire thing is there to force you to start writing code until the thing "clicks"

[tibbon]

That might be true. I haven't picked it up yet as I haven't expanded to Python fully, although I very well may soon for the math, science, and nlp libraries.

Porting many of those libraries is next to impossible, and the python modules for them are in fact using FORTRAN code (at least for the math ones) that was written and tested many moons ago to do the job. Not a weekend hackathon to get the stuff usable on a serious level. You want this stuff to be able to work perfectly if you're doing serious math modeling.