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The biggest difference is the communities surrounding each, and the impression each leaves on people. When I think of "Python", I think of a mature, helpful, e

The biggest difference is the communities surrounding each, and the impression each leaves on people. When I think of "Python", I think of a mature, helpful, experienced, talented, well-educated community. I can generally trust their advice, I can trust their code, and I can trust their technical decisions. It feels like collaboration is important and encouraged. The Ruby community, whether this is deserved or not, leaves a very different impression. Anything good is quickly and heavily overshadowed by the unnecessary and petty drama, the egos, the fixation on worshiping certain figures in the community (DHH, Zed, why the lucky stiff), poor technical decisions, inexperience, repeated displays of very immature conference behavior, and so forth. In can reflect very poorly upon a language when the community is generally toxic, like in the case of Ruby, or very positively when the community is generally superb, like in the case of Python. This is true even when the languages themselves are rather similar, from a technical perspective.

patallan 14y ago
I think this is a little unfair - you do prefix your thoughts on the Ruby community with 'whether this is deserved or not', but then treat your perception of the community as fact. I'm a Rubyist, and I've found that the vast majority of the community, events, interactions, etc are smart and civil. Yes, the Ruby community does have a bit of a publicity problem, but that's just the noisy/stupid minority. Perhaps this is a common issue more broadly. (Are all PHP developers stupid? Are all lawyers money-hungry scum? Do politicians have no regard for intelligent discourse?) Our media (whether that be mainstream or Twitter and HN) is great at highlighting the controversy, but not a good source for a deeper understanding of the lay of the land.
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atombender 14y ago
As a former Python dev, I find the Ruby community to be just as positive an experience as the Python. Different, but just as positive. Any community will have stratas of personality types that exist in various proportions: * The loudmouth alpha types (DHH, Zed) * The playful jesters (_why, Tom Preston-Warner) who are often evangelists * The sharp-minded, code-focusing engineer types code (lots!) * The newbies (lots, too!) The Ruby community has been perceived as blighted with in-fighting, but it is, in my opinion, rather a case of certain people, the first type, trying to be public leaders, and failing at it. Those big sounds are just ill-considered publicity stunts. It's clear that DHH wants to be the Linus Torvalds of the Ruby community, blasting his way through perceived idiocy with profanity-filled speeches appealing to common sense and good engineering. Zed seems to want to be Jamie Zawinsky. Leadership does not come from being loud. Ruby has its share of the playful and weird. Sometimes they give the impression of hyping something, because they bring with them their rosy-tinted version of the world where everything is fun and great. Sometimes they come across as glib and obnoxious because, well, they are, a bit. Overall I think they are an asset. These two types are the people you encounter if you follow blogs and tweets, precisely because those two personality types depend on publicity. The Ruby community will certainly seem overrepresented by idiots if you go that route. But if you go on the Ruby mailing list you will see a different community, one that looks more like the Python people. Matz and many other core devs are conservative, highly technical, mature, and very helpful. There are also many low-visibility sub-communities that are very professional. My local Ruby meetup community in Oslo [1] is a wonderful bunch of highly technical, development-focused people who have none of the negative traits you describe. And if you go back to the question of what a community is supposed to provide -- help, insight, direction, ideas -- there are tons of great people. That said, do I think the proportion of highly-skilled, high-technical is somewhat smaller in the Ruby community than the Python community? I do. Python has gained acceptance in more conservative, engineering/science/maths-oriented environments where Ruby has not yet reached, partly because of tools like SciPy. In fact, my feeling is that Python seems generally to attract a higher proportion of "engineer types" who are attracted by Python's rigidity (one way of doing things, etc.), compared to Ruby's often extreme malleability and laxness. This also means that the Ruby community is potentially missing out on some hard-core devs, and without support from the engineering/science/maths sphere it's never going to get things like SciPy. And as for the newbies, Ruby has perhaps a bigger than usual share of inexperienced devs who are pollute the library space with lower-quality code. I blame this on the fact that Ruby is so simple to learn and has attacted many people through Rails, and this gives some devs a false feeling of confidence. I have had my share of time spent wading through other people's bug-ridden, ill-architected Ruby gems, but then if anything it's taught me to be careful. [1] http://irb.no/ http://irb.no/
philwelch 14y ago
How many years ago did Zed quit Ruby for Python? How many years ago did why disappear? And that leaves DHH, who almost no one "worships" (most of the time people just get angry at him over CoffeeScript or something equally trivial).

patallan 14y ago

I think this is a little unfair - you do prefix your thoughts on the Ruby community with 'whether this is deserved or not', but then treat your perception of the community as fact. I'm a Rubyist, and I've found that the vast majority of the community, events, interactions, etc are smart and civil. Yes, the Ruby community does have a bit of a publicity problem, but that's just the noisy/stupid minority. Perhaps this is a common issue more broadly. (Are all PHP developers stupid? Are all lawyers money-hungry scum? Do politicians have no regard for intelligent discourse?) Our media (whether that be mainstream or Twitter and HN) is great at highlighting the controversy, but not a good source for a deeper understanding of the lay of the land.

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atombender 14y ago

As a former Python dev, I find the Ruby community to be just as positive an experience as the Python. Different, but just as positive. Any community will have stratas of personality types that exist in various proportions: * The loudmouth alpha types (DHH, Zed) * The playful jesters (_why, Tom Preston-Warner) who are often evangelists * The sharp-minded, code-focusing engineer types code (lots!) * The newbies (lots, too!) The Ruby community has been perceived as blighted with in-fighting, but it is, in my opinion, rather a case of certain people, the first type, trying to be public leaders, and failing at it. Those big sounds are just ill-considered publicity stunts. It's clear that DHH wants to be the Linus Torvalds of the Ruby community, blasting his way through perceived idiocy with profanity-filled speeches appealing to common sense and good engineering. Zed seems to want to be Jamie Zawinsky. Leadership does not come from being loud. Ruby has its share of the playful and weird. Sometimes they give the impression of hyping something, because they bring with them their rosy-tinted version of the world where everything is fun and great. Sometimes they come across as glib and obnoxious because, well, they are, a bit. Overall I think they are an asset. These two types are the people you encounter if you follow blogs and tweets, precisely because those two personality types depend on publicity. The Ruby community will certainly seem overrepresented by idiots if you go that route. But if you go on the Ruby mailing list you will see a different community, one that looks more like the Python people. Matz and many other core devs are conservative, highly technical, mature, and very helpful. There are also many low-visibility sub-communities that are very professional. My local Ruby meetup community in Oslo [1] is a wonderful bunch of highly technical, development-focused people who have none of the negative traits you describe. And if you go back to the question of what a community is supposed to provide -- help, insight, direction, ideas -- there are tons of great people. That said, do I think the proportion of highly-skilled, high-technical is somewhat smaller in the Ruby community than the Python community? I do. Python has gained acceptance in more conservative, engineering/science/maths-oriented environments where Ruby has not yet reached, partly because of tools like SciPy. In fact, my feeling is that Python seems generally to attract a higher proportion of "engineer types" who are attracted by Python's rigidity (one way of doing things, etc.), compared to Ruby's often extreme malleability and laxness. This also means that the Ruby community is potentially missing out on some hard-core devs, and without support from the engineering/science/maths sphere it's never going to get things like SciPy. And as for the newbies, Ruby has perhaps a bigger than usual share of inexperienced devs who are pollute the library space with lower-quality code. I blame this on the fact that Ruby is so simple to learn and has attacted many people through Rails, and this gives some devs a false feeling of confidence. I have had my share of time spent wading through other people's bug-ridden, ill-architected Ruby gems, but then if anything it's taught me to be careful. [1] http://irb.no/ http://irb.no/

philwelch 14y ago

How many years ago did Zed quit Ruby for Python? How many years ago did why disappear? And that leaves DHH, who almost no one "worships" (most of the time people just get angry at him over CoffeeScript or something equally trivial).