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> My advice: Try both languages. See which language you like better, then learn that one. After that, learn the other. Argh, I hate the "learn both" conclusion

> My advice: Try both languages. See which language you like better, then learn that one. After that, learn the other. Argh, I hate the "learn both" conclusion. It doesn't help anyone. If doing web programming? Ruby (+Rails). Desktop / scientific computing? Python As a general heuristic, just look at the types of projects you want to build and what they're built in. Then use that.

rat87 13y ago
From the page: > Usage > Python can be used for web development, sys admin, statistics, and scientific computation. Meanwhile, Ruby is used primarily for web development. Python has the upper hand here, but if you are looking to only do web development, Ruby is the way to go.
- navyrain 13y ago
  This is where the article starts to show its bias. Of course ruby can do everything mentioned as well. Python has a leg up in scientific computing and stats. Ruby has a leg up in web and devops. Saying one "can do" everything, and the other "only does web" is misleading. As the grandparent said, it really depends on your goals.
  - alrs 13y ago
    Ruby is quickly dying in the ops space. I wouldn't use either Chef or Puppet today for a greenfield project.
    - boon 13y ago
      What do you see as the new hotness that has replaced them?
      - digisign 13y ago
        Salt, ansible, and pave (the fabric extension).
    - easong 13y ago
      As someone about to start architecting their first reasonably sized deployment automation project, what do you think one should be using instead? (Currently planning on Chef.)
      - stonith 13y ago
        Depends what you're deploying. I use a lot of puppet to deploy openstack, which means interacting heavily with community modules for things like mysql and rabbitmq. The situation will be identical for Chef (but replace 'module' with 'recipe)'. If you are primarily deploying software for which there are mature modules or recipes, I think choosing salt or ansible is more likely to result in you having to patch the upstream modules than puppet or chef. If you elect to go with puppet or chef, be prepared to use something as an orchestration tool compliment the configuration management. Ansible and Salt can both be used as orchestrators to compliment a puppet or chef based configuration. Of course, if you're deploying something simple, it makes no difference what you use. They will all handle package installs, config file templating and service management. In this case, Ansible/Salt are probably better as they will contain the orchestration features.
    - easong 13y ago
      As someone about to start architecting their first reasonably sized deployment automation project, what do you think one should be using instead? (Currently planning on Chef.)
    - roflc0ptic 13y ago
      Asking as someone who's trying to figure out continuous integration (and loves python): what would you use?
      - Shish2k 13y ago
        for continuous integration as in build server, I'd use Jenkins; for network-wide configuration management (which I think is what you were asking), Salt
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
There's probably just as many people using Python as Ruby for web development nowadays. I'm not sure the dichotomy you posed really applies. Better learn both.

rat87 13y ago

From the page: > Usage > Python can be used for web development, sys admin, statistics, and scientific computation. Meanwhile, Ruby is used primarily for web development. Python has the upper hand here, but if you are looking to only do web development, Ruby is the way to go.

navyrain 13y ago
This is where the article starts to show its bias. Of course ruby can do everything mentioned as well. Python has a leg up in scientific computing and stats. Ruby has a leg up in web and devops. Saying one "can do" everything, and the other "only does web" is misleading. As the grandparent said, it really depends on your goals.
- alrs 13y ago
  Ruby is quickly dying in the ops space. I wouldn't use either Chef or Puppet today for a greenfield project.
  - boon 13y ago
    What do you see as the new hotness that has replaced them?
    - digisign 13y ago
      Salt, ansible, and pave (the fabric extension).
  - easong 13y ago
    As someone about to start architecting their first reasonably sized deployment automation project, what do you think one should be using instead? (Currently planning on Chef.)
    - stonith 13y ago
      Depends what you're deploying. I use a lot of puppet to deploy openstack, which means interacting heavily with community modules for things like mysql and rabbitmq. The situation will be identical for Chef (but replace 'module' with 'recipe)'. If you are primarily deploying software for which there are mature modules or recipes, I think choosing salt or ansible is more likely to result in you having to patch the upstream modules than puppet or chef. If you elect to go with puppet or chef, be prepared to use something as an orchestration tool compliment the configuration management. Ansible and Salt can both be used as orchestrators to compliment a puppet or chef based configuration. Of course, if you're deploying something simple, it makes no difference what you use. They will all handle package installs, config file templating and service management. In this case, Ansible/Salt are probably better as they will contain the orchestration features.
  - easong 13y ago
    As someone about to start architecting their first reasonably sized deployment automation project, what do you think one should be using instead? (Currently planning on Chef.)
  - roflc0ptic 13y ago
    Asking as someone who's trying to figure out continuous integration (and loves python): what would you use?
    - Shish2k 13y ago
      for continuous integration as in build server, I'd use Jenkins; for network-wide configuration management (which I think is what you were asking), Salt

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

There's probably just as many people using Python as Ruby for web development nowadays. I'm not sure the dichotomy you posed really applies. Better learn both.