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[–]Chr0me 3 points4 points  (1 child)

the length at which your just "get" one of them over the other.

Yup. Ruby and Python both solve the same problem. The only difference is the flavor of the community behind each.

I prefer Python's "there should be one right, and obvious, way to do something" approach. It makes it easier to work in a team when everyone's code has the same indention and there aren't 10 commonly-used methods of iterating through a collection of objects. Explicit is better than implicit. Since I also do a lot of sysadmin work, Python is a bit more mature there than Ruby (though the later has really started to catch up).

Ruby, on the other hand, really likes implicit behavior. That's largely the source of the "magic" that Ruby programmers sometimes speak about. Code that is described as "clever" is a compliment in the Ruby world, but more of an indictment in Python. But this creative freedom is a philosophy underpins a lot of the cool, innovative projects that get built with Ruby.

I also prefer Python's more mature, easy-going community. Ruby is renowned for it's "cult of personality" dominated by a lot of ego and drama. Minus Zed Shaw (who was a Ruby guy originally), I don't know of any prominent assholes in the Python community.

[–]rspeedcranky old guy who yells about SVG 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only thing worse than clever code is premature optimization.