Home Original page

Two languages, too similar, competing in the same space.

Ron Stephens rdsteph at earthlink.net
Thu Dec 27 17:56:29 EST 2001 
I appreciate all of the above comments from all of you. To sum up my
position, briefly;

I feel that Ruby is so similar in design, purpose, and objectives to
Python,  that it competes directly with Python for developers' mind share.
However, Ruby does not, in my opinion, offer compelling enough improvements
upon Python, as to justify switching from Python to Ruby. In fact, I much
*prefer* Python to Ruby. But I can see where some significant number of
Python developers *might* prefer Ruby a little bit, because of some minor
differences, enhancements etc. I just don't think that such perceived
"enhancements" create any significant enough improvement to *justify* the
enormous work in the creation of Ruby, as a Python-like clone.

 Bruce Eckles said that, if a language can't give dramatic productivity
improvements over a predecessor language, that it does not justify one's
switching. 10% improvements are not nearly enough, he said. Now, we can
argue until the cows come home whether or not Ruby gives *any* improvements
at all over Python; I suspect it is a matter of taste. But now that Ruby is
out there, it absorbs enormous mind share, and development time to recreate
libraries etc., which are already available in Python,  thus hurting Python.

Of course Perl hackers might have said similar things about Python 10 year
ago ;-))).

And I like and respect Matz and the whole Ruby community. I wish them well.
But I recognize that their success may, on the margins at least, slow down
Python. Ah well, ....

Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
More information about the Python-list mailing list