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Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said, 'If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood or assign them tasks and work. Instead, teach them t

Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said, 'If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood or assign them tasks and work. Instead, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.' This resonates with how I feel about programming languages. Python might be more practical, but does it ignite a passion for coding like Ruby has historically done? I remember dabbling in Python, Perl, and JavaScript (ES5) back in high school, but it wasn't until I rediscovered programming through Ruby that I truly began to enjoy it. Nowadays, I might not default to Ruby for new projects, having moved on to OCaml and Elixir, among others. Yet, there's something about Ruby's community (its charm and gentleness,) that's missing in many others. This nurturing environment is invaluable for beginners. It's noteworthy how members of the Ruby community, like José Valim with Elixir, Yehuda Katz with Ember.js and Rust, and Chris McCord with Phoenix, have carried this spirit of playfulness and a deep care for developer experience into other communities they've joined.

VonGallifrey 3y ago
This is more or less personal preference though. When you say that Ruby ignites a passion for coding for you then that might not happen for other people. For example I only feel a headache when I look at Ruby code. For context: I worked with C, C#, some Python and now mostly work in Go.
- vidarh 3y ago
  How often do you see people describe that kind of passion for Python? Maybe for lisps, Erlang, Haskell, Smalltalk. It may well put some people off, that's fine, but personally I dread it when I have to work with languages that don't instill that kind of passion. There are plenty of things I'd like to be different about Ruby and the tooling, but with Ruby I feel like I'm crafting something that at least has the potential for elegance, whereas looking at Python code is like staring at a brutalist building that spews its innards all over its surface. (and yes, I realise some people love brutalist buildings, and I can too, sometime, when particularly well done, and that's why I chose that example - it's possible to do amazing and elegant things in any language, even - as ugly as I personally find it - Python)
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    > How often do you see people describe that kind of passion for Python? It's part of modern science/technology culture to indiscriminately hate the most widespread things. Personally, I find Python simply amazing and delightful to work with. And I consider its syntax, especially semantic indentation which eliminates so much visual noise, to be the best among all languages that ever achieved widespread adoption.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      > It's part of modern science/technology culture to indiscriminately hate the most widespread things. This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now? > And I consider its syntax, especially semantic indentation which eliminates so much visual noise, to be the best among all languages that ever achieved widespread adoption. And for me it is why Python will never even make my top 10 preferred languages, and is a language I actively avoid when I have a chance, because I find it visually absolutely awful. I'd suspect (yes, it's pure speculation) you'll find about as many people who detest Python over that alone, as who find Python "delightful". Useful, sure, but finding people who describe Python as delightful is a rarity. But as I said, some people find brutalist architecture to be amazing too, and that's fair enough.
      - antod 3y ago
        > This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now? Quite a lot back in the early 2.x era before the Rails hype first kicked in. It really was a breath of fresh air compared to VB, Perl, JS, early Java or PHP of the time. It had a concise elegant clarity and consistency missing in other mainstream languages back then. And it was a relatively unknown underdog. eg relevant to HN, here is PG talking about Python 20yrs ago: https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html I've spent the last decade in Ruby shops and not done much Python recently, but I still miss those early Python days. Ruby never gave me the same sense of happiness it gave others and there are still things I prefer about Python. But it is subjective and I couldn't objectively say Python is better than Ruby. Things are very different now - it is a much larger language with a much longer history to trip over, pulled in multiple directions with conflicting expectations, and the user base has changed from that small passionate dedicated community to being the intro to coding blub language that Java or PHP used to be where the average skill level is much lower.
- weatherlight 3y ago
  I think you missed my point, Its the community around a language that creates that "longing for the endless immensity of the sea." Not the language itself.
- lupire 3y ago
  You can love programming in a language, or you can love making programs, or be somewhere on the gradient between them. Go, for example, is aimed at people who love making programs.

VonGallifrey 3y ago

This is more or less personal preference though. When you say that Ruby ignites a passion for coding for you then that might not happen for other people. For example I only feel a headache when I look at Ruby code. For context: I worked with C, C#, some Python and now mostly work in Go.

vidarh 3y ago
How often do you see people describe that kind of passion for Python? Maybe for lisps, Erlang, Haskell, Smalltalk. It may well put some people off, that's fine, but personally I dread it when I have to work with languages that don't instill that kind of passion. There are plenty of things I'd like to be different about Ruby and the tooling, but with Ruby I feel like I'm crafting something that at least has the potential for elegance, whereas looking at Python code is like staring at a brutalist building that spews its innards all over its surface. (and yes, I realise some people love brutalist buildings, and I can too, sometime, when particularly well done, and that's why I chose that example - it's possible to do amazing and elegant things in any language, even - as ugly as I personally find it - Python)
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > How often do you see people describe that kind of passion for Python? It's part of modern science/technology culture to indiscriminately hate the most widespread things. Personally, I find Python simply amazing and delightful to work with. And I consider its syntax, especially semantic indentation which eliminates so much visual noise, to be the best among all languages that ever achieved widespread adoption.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    > It's part of modern science/technology culture to indiscriminately hate the most widespread things. This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now? > And I consider its syntax, especially semantic indentation which eliminates so much visual noise, to be the best among all languages that ever achieved widespread adoption. And for me it is why Python will never even make my top 10 preferred languages, and is a language I actively avoid when I have a chance, because I find it visually absolutely awful. I'd suspect (yes, it's pure speculation) you'll find about as many people who detest Python over that alone, as who find Python "delightful". Useful, sure, but finding people who describe Python as delightful is a rarity. But as I said, some people find brutalist architecture to be amazing too, and that's fair enough.
    - antod 3y ago
      > This is evasive. How often did you see people describe Python that way before it became as widespread as it is now? Quite a lot back in the early 2.x era before the Rails hype first kicked in. It really was a breath of fresh air compared to VB, Perl, JS, early Java or PHP of the time. It had a concise elegant clarity and consistency missing in other mainstream languages back then. And it was a relatively unknown underdog. eg relevant to HN, here is PG talking about Python 20yrs ago: https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html https://paulgraham.com/pypar.html I've spent the last decade in Ruby shops and not done much Python recently, but I still miss those early Python days. Ruby never gave me the same sense of happiness it gave others and there are still things I prefer about Python. But it is subjective and I couldn't objectively say Python is better than Ruby. Things are very different now - it is a much larger language with a much longer history to trip over, pulled in multiple directions with conflicting expectations, and the user base has changed from that small passionate dedicated community to being the intro to coding blub language that Java or PHP used to be where the average skill level is much lower.
weatherlight 3y ago
I think you missed my point, Its the community around a language that creates that "longing for the endless immensity of the sea." Not the language itself.
lupire 3y ago
You can love programming in a language, or you can love making programs, or be somewhere on the gradient between them. Go, for example, is aimed at people who love making programs.