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I would've probably picked Python, mostly because you get all of that stuff with (almost) uniformly better syntax. But I certainly don't blame you, especially i

• SwellJoe 19y ago
  If we were starting Webmin, Virtualmin and Usermin today, it could very well be in Python. We both like it as a language, and have worked in it on pretty large projects. And the syntax is certainly cleaner and simpler. I'm also quite fond of Ruby, though its standard implementation leaves a lot to be desired (performance, Unicode, lack of libraries). But, we'd have to spend some time with it to know for sure...as I mentioned in the longer explanation in this thread, I've done quite a bit of sysadmin tasks in Python (modifying others code, generally), and in every single case I've felt like the implementation was longer than it needed to be, and more complex. In a couple of cases, I even talked it over with seriously good Python guys and did comparative implementations to try and improve my own grasp of Python, and the response was generally something like: "Sure, the Python implementation is twice as long, and runs slower, but I can't read the Perl implementation!" Which is a valid response, of course, but I think just showed that they had never worked in Perl and had little comprehension of its idioms. But, to be fair, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the Python code I've had to modify. Perhaps the single most satisfying patch I ever wrote for someone else's code was to add authentication support back into yum after they moved from urllib to urllib2. It was the first Python code I'd ever touched, and it was a very pleasant learning experience. Really nice code.