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Ruby was the number 1 reason why about 6 years ago, fresh out of uni with a Java/C background, I chose to learn Python and Django. Ruby seemed rather useless o

Ruby was the number 1 reason why about 6 years ago, fresh out of uni with a Java/C background, I chose to learn Python and Django. Ruby seemed rather useless outside of Rails and I really, really liked what I saw in the Zen of Python. Ie. less magic, explicit > implicit. Etc.

gamesbrainiac 10y ago
I have to agree here. Its a good thing that Django doesn't have the kind of overwhelming power that Rails has in the community, which is pretty awesome! There's a lot of diversity, like flask, pyramid and others; although Django does have a large part of the pie.
- dec0dedab0de 10y ago
  I think he was saying thay Django has a relatively small part in the overall Python pie.
  - elbear 10y ago
    As in web development plays a small part in everything Python. Python's scientific use comes to mind as a strong alternative.
saiprashanth93 10y ago
It's great that you learned Python and Django instead of Rails, but it seems pretty uncalled for to call Ruby useless outside of Rails. Programming languages take off because they show off their power by implementing a great library or by doing a better way of doing things which is what Ruby did using Rails. The impact of Rails on frameworks/libraries in other languages is also significant since a lot of Ruby developers moved to JS/Elixir/Go and started contributing and implementing the best patterns found in Rails/Sinatra etc.
- pluma 10y ago
  I think "useless" in this case is meant in the sense of "isn't used much". The Ruby community and ecosystem is dominated by Rails to a much greater degree than Python is dominated by Django. Django is merely one of the more popular solutions to a larger niche of what Python is used for. The closest equivalent to Rails in Python in terms of dominance is probably SciPy and even that comparison is a stretch. The Python ecosystem is much more diverse than Ruby. Not because Ruby can't be used for anything other than what Rails is used for, but because there are simply more people doing the different things Python can be used for. And ultimately the practical usefulness of a language depends not just on the suitability of the language itself for the given task but also on the availability of libraries for the common problems you encounter when solving that task. So the usefulness of a language (for a given task) is at least partially defined by how much it is actually used (to solve that task).
edraferi 10y ago
I agree. The Python ecosystem has a healthier amount of diversity, both in terms of Django vs other frameworks and web development vs other use cases.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
Ruby is used in many other projects outside of Rails and some don't have anything to do with web development (Chef, Puppet, Homebrew, Vagrant, Metasploit, Logstash, Capistrano).

gamesbrainiac 10y ago

I have to agree here. Its a good thing that Django doesn't have the kind of overwhelming power that Rails has in the community, which is pretty awesome! There's a lot of diversity, like flask, pyramid and others; although Django does have a large part of the pie.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago
I think he was saying thay Django has a relatively small part in the overall Python pie.
- elbear 10y ago
  As in web development plays a small part in everything Python. Python's scientific use comes to mind as a strong alternative.

saiprashanth93 10y ago

It's great that you learned Python and Django instead of Rails, but it seems pretty uncalled for to call Ruby useless outside of Rails. Programming languages take off because they show off their power by implementing a great library or by doing a better way of doing things which is what Ruby did using Rails. The impact of Rails on frameworks/libraries in other languages is also significant since a lot of Ruby developers moved to JS/Elixir/Go and started contributing and implementing the best patterns found in Rails/Sinatra etc.

pluma 10y ago
I think "useless" in this case is meant in the sense of "isn't used much". The Ruby community and ecosystem is dominated by Rails to a much greater degree than Python is dominated by Django. Django is merely one of the more popular solutions to a larger niche of what Python is used for. The closest equivalent to Rails in Python in terms of dominance is probably SciPy and even that comparison is a stretch. The Python ecosystem is much more diverse than Ruby. Not because Ruby can't be used for anything other than what Rails is used for, but because there are simply more people doing the different things Python can be used for. And ultimately the practical usefulness of a language depends not just on the suitability of the language itself for the given task but also on the availability of libraries for the common problems you encounter when solving that task. So the usefulness of a language (for a given task) is at least partially defined by how much it is actually used (to solve that task).

edraferi 10y ago

I agree. The Python ecosystem has a healthier amount of diversity, both in terms of Django vs other frameworks and web development vs other use cases.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago

Ruby is used in many other projects outside of Rails and some don't have anything to do with web development (Chef, Puppet, Homebrew, Vagrant, Metasploit, Logstash, Capistrano).