Yet Another Ruby/Python Article.
A coworker of mine has been going on about Python for ages. I’ve been quite happy on my little Perl island, not doing much more than writing little scripts for doing short menial tasks or scraping web sites. I thought it was about time to get with the times and update my knowledge of programming languages. I remember stumbling upon Ruby years ago (not quite this early; maybe a year after) and not thinking much about it. Python always seemed so distant, like I could never see myself using it for anything. In Mid-2001, I got into PHP in a big way. All my sites became PHP-based, and I was advocating PHP for any new sites we would build at the Web design company I used to work at. None of the code I wrote in PHP or Perl was really all that OOP, because it never seemed warranted. I’ve known about OOP since I was 16, but I’ve never seen a practical example that showed it’s merits, even through university (when I went through too late to learn C++ and too early to learn Java, so I learned Turing instead). It wasn’t until my latest job, where I got exposed to .Net and C# that I really learned the value and flexibility of OOP. I’ve since taken to it luck a duck to water.
Now I’m trying to find a comfortable language to use for my hobby projects outside of work. Seeing as I’d be doing my development on Mac OS X, Mono would make the most sense, but the maturity level doesn’t seem to be quite there, yet. Java seems to be the next best choice, and I likely will take the time to learn it soon, but it really feels like last decade’s technology (i.e. a little long in the tooth). It’s a mature language/framework, and a first-class citizen in the world of Mac development, but it feels like it’s being leap-frogged by something. Basically, it doesn’t feel all that exciting to learn.
That brings us to Python and Ruby. I don’t know much about either, but what I do know is that I don’t know a little less about Python, because I’ve at least looked at some programs written in Python. From the sounds of it, most people fall into one or the other’s camp, but one thing seems to be clear: either is better than Perl.
I’ve spent the last couple of days checking out Python, checking out Ruby, checking out Django, checking out Rails, checking out TextMate, and checking out Eclipse, and I’ve come to this conclusion: I need to check them out a little longer. Eclipse seems like a really good IDE, but not for me. It doesn’t adhere to the standard keyboard shortcuts for navigating through text as I’ve become accustomed to on the Mac (nor does it seem to adhere to any Windows “standard”). The shortcuts seem fully customizable, which gets you part of the way, but there are other behaviours that don’t seem customizable, and I don’t have the time/patience to babysit my IDE. I need to spend the next little while running TextMate though its paces. Vim is my editor of choice, but definitely doesn’t adhere to OS standards.
Right now I’m leaning towards Ruby. The latest stable version (1.8.2) comes pre-installed in Tiger. I downloaded Rails, installed it, and had the boilerplate page up and running in less than five minutes. There was nothing painful about it. Rails looks good, but what happens when the database you’re trying to build the interface for is not so simple as having primary key columns named ‘id?’ Django looks pretty good, too. I’ll have to check it out when I kick into Python gear.
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