Genuinely curious about why you prefer Ruby. - Chris Lasher
I really like Perl's magic and Ruby inherited a little of it :) But seriously, I still cannot get around regular expressions (which I use all the time) in Python - Perl/Ruby equivalent is way more powerful and easy to use. - Pawel Szczesny
That's interesting. I thought the same thing going from Perl to Python, at first, but now I much prefer Python's method of doing regular expressions; in the end I find them much more comprehensible in Python. AMK wrote a fantastic Python regex tutorial, which, if you haven't been through, I highly recommend doing so: http://www.amk.ca/python/howto... - Chris Lasher
Thanks Chris, I know that tutorial (it's number one in Google). Maybe when I get more experience with Python, I will appreciate pythonish regexps - I have barely touched the language. - Pawel Szczesny
There is a fair amount of work learning Rails' conventions - but once you're there, I suspect development time in lower for Rails. Then again I would say that. ; ) - Matt Wood
It's also worth mentioning that Python's string methods can do matching and replacement for which one might tend to use a regex by instinct. See http://docs.python.org/lib/str.... Then there's beautiful things like checking the existence of a string in another simply by using "in", e.g. `'AZY10000' in 'ACCESSION AZY10000'` returns `True`. I'm definitely of the "'I know, I'll use regular expressions'--and now you have *two* problems" camp, so this suits me well. - Chris Lasher
That's a great tutorial on Python's regex. And I was going to mention what Chris did regarding Python strings. - Paulo Nuin
I know Python, don't really know Ruby; but I suspect that Matt's intuition is off (I can't see there being much of a difference in development time either way). One advantage Python has, though - as far as I can tell - is the libraries; numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pycairo, PIL, lxml, rdflib. - Andrew Walkingshaw
I definitely grok Ruby more easily than Python, which was the driver to go the Rails route. - Deepak
I do like frameworks but I've become less interested in "full-stack" frameworks like Rails/Django since they tend to include the kitchen-sink only to break down in those important 20% cases. I would much rather cherry-pick the parts of a framework I find useful and leave the rest. There's plenty of alternative frameworks emerging in both Ruby and Python that are arguably better than the mainstream (Merb and Pylons come to mind) - Adam Kraut
Re: development time: true, for experienced users, there may not be a big difference, but most aren't experienced users (or Ruby or Python users, for that matter). - Matt Wood
Excellent point, Matt. I don't have any data to support your statement, but I, too, would posit that most users are inexperienced. - Chris Lasher
Agree with @adamk about kitchen sink. I recommend Ramaze and Sinatra as even smaller Ruby frameworks. Ruby also has mod_rails too. - Michael Barton
I'm newbie in both languages (for example I didn't know that "in string" Python trick) and both frameworks, so maybe in my case it's an effect of visual simplicity of Django (it doesn't have MVC written all over the place, like Rails has). Adam, thanks for suggesting other frameworks. As soon as I'm done with Django (end of this month), I will have a look at both. - Pawel Szczesny
There are two types of inexperience: inexperience with the framework (but experience elsewhere), and inexperience with the language or specific implementation (for example, those learning Python or Ruby as they go). Rails' dependence on best practices and design patterns helps those from column A, whilst the conventions help those in column B. - Matt Wood
