Socks and Sandals

1. 

   Jolyon Brown 1 day later:

   A very interesting post, with some excellent links (first I’ve ever heard of Hadoop, I must confess). Thanks!

2. 

   Manuel 1 day later:

   Toby, thanks for that insightful post.

   Could you explain why you consider pure user level threads superior to native threads?

   It would interest me most how they are more powerful on multiprocessor and multicore systems. Additionally, I always thought that user level (“green”) threads are a performance bottleneck if you do blocking system calls (such as reading files or blocking network communication).

3. 

   Matt S Trout 1 day later:

   I’m afraid you were unlucky in finding perl2exe from active state software rather than looking on CPAN – the free (in both senses) pp from the PAR toolkit works fine for win32 executable building (http://search.cpan.org/~smueller/PAR-Packer-0.973/lib/pp.pm)

   OTOH, if you find python easier to maintain and you’re the one who’ll be maintaining it then your decision is obviously the right one in spite of pp’s existence – but please don’t mistake active state’s commercial stuff as being the only perl tools available for those purposes :)

4. 

   Asd 1 day later:

   I’m not really a Ruby fan myself, but have you thought about JRuby? You’d get a much more reliable garbage collector at least. The threads are not green threads, but IMO green threads are not an advantage.

5. 

   sili 1 day later:

   It’s unfortunate that you had issues with the Ruby runtime – I haven’t heard of too many problems with it. Maybe it’s just bad timing.

   It’s also unfortunate that you have such a strong dislike for Perl. I wish I could share with you the pleasure it’s been for me to use it over the years. It’s understandable how someone unfamiliar with its history lacks appreciation for all its gems or finds it ‘mnemonically taxing,’ but snarky comments regarding Perl’s readability “six months later” make me cringe.

   Despite the TIMTOWTDI mantra, there is a Right Way to do things… and seasoned programmers know this. Not once have I blamed a language for a program’s maintainability issues. I recommend using Perl, or any other language, as you would a blow torch – wisely.

   - sili

6. 

   Joe 1 day later:

   I use Python where possible these days – on all platforms. Check out Django for MVC.

   Good article.

7. 

   Zawatto 1 day later:

   Ruby’s run-time is immature, but the language itself is a serious improvement over Perl (horrid OOP implementation) and Python (editor-dependent notation, clumsy REGEX implementation).

   You made the right choice given your circumstances. That’s what software engineering is all about. A commercial commitment is the antithesis of “open-source evangelism”. Mistake #1 was insisting on your favourite language as the only tool in your kit.

   What is “stone-clad”? Things are cast in stone or they are clad in iron. “Clad in stone” is senseless but would probably pass in a marketing meeting. :o)

8. 

   Eric Elinow 1 day later:

   I appreciate a well stated article such as this. I too came to python but not from Ruby (though I had been writing some simple code in it) but from Perl (after 7 years primarily coding in it professionally.

   Without going into great detail I can say that Python, while initially repulsive to me, won me over with its power, speed and design.

   Ultimately I ended up contracting for a large retail chain re-writing their point of sale register merchandise returns system in Python. It now runs 365 days a year in over 400 stores and I must say that the development time was minimal with wonderful, reliable results.

   The ability to deliver optimised byte code only right out of the box was an especially nice perk. I knew that compatibility over a wide variety of deployed OS arrangements wouldn’t be an issue, nor would the heavy use of the Oracle 10g/Solaris server combinations.

   I welcome you to the Python user-base and hope to see more writing on your experiences in the future.

   Sincerely,

   Eric Elinow Software Engineer

9. 

   combino 1 day later:

   perl is awful

10. 

    th0m 1 day later:

    Jython! Do your comprehensions with Java objects! Its oldish (python 2.1 / 2.2… although recent alphas have generators!), but it is simply amazing what you can tie together with the simplicity of Python code. I’ve used it with Processing (P5 or Proce55ing), the Jena RDF libraries, ssh clients, J2EE web servers (creating a full fledged .EAR!) and had lots of fun, too, whilst integrating.

11. 

    Mat Schaffer 1 day later:

    Say it ain’t so, Toby! Say it ain’t so!

    Either way, I hope you’ll still come to the PubNites. I’d really miss your company if you stopped.

    Great article. Tons of insight and wit as always. Thanks!

12. 

    Asd 1 day later:

    “Stone clad” does make sense in the context of concrete buildings with stone cladding. I’ve heard “cast in stone” but it does not make sense now that I think about it. Iron is cast however. I would think iron cladding of battleships went out of style a long time ago :)

13. 

    Nicola Larosa 1 day later:

    A warm welcome from a long-time Pythonista. :-)

    > I will probably still fall back on Ruby for text-processing > scripts as its always been stellar for those kinds of tasks.

    You probably didn’t bump into PyParsing yet. ;-)

    It’s a pity some don’t get the brilliance of significant indentation.

    Last but not least, always beware of preemptive multithreading, whether native or user level. There’s a reason why Twisted and Erlang are what they are.

14. 

    Jake 1 day later:

    So will Twitter.com be rewritten using Python?

15. 

    Michael Gorsuch 1 day later:

    Great article, Toby. Although I love Ruby, I think it’s time to move on to something else myself for very similar reasons.

16. 

    Peter Cooper 1 day later:

    Great article! I am rather scared to post this on Ruby Inside however ;-)

    In any case, it must be good as you have now, for perhaps my fourth or fifth time, got me to take a serious look at Python again.. and this time it’s actually starting to make a lot of sense..

17. 

    Carl 1 day later:

    So Ruby is a better language and Python has a better runtime. You probably could say the same for Python vs Java.

    Is it likely the Ruby will get a better runtime or Python get a better syntax – while maintaining backward compatibility? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

    I do agree that you should use the best tool for the job but with the caveat that everyone would be using hammers if new tools weren’t invented – stone-age or stone-clad?

    I think competition is good but I think on some level it is delaying what I think will become the next popular development platform – dynamic languages. Who really has the time to master 2 or 3 of these things anymore and convince the company that they are working for to use them? So should the Ruby guys all move over to Python to advance Python and leave Ruby for dead?

    Ruby for me has made programming “fun” again – I wonder if I will/would have this same experience using Python? Certainly it would be better than Java which after 4 years left a nasty taste in my mouth and sucked the joy out of programming,

18. 

    Kendall Schoenrock 1 day later:

    Go Nova! Excellent post Toby!

19. 

    Fitzgerald Steele 1 day later:

    I read this post purely for the Snoop Dogg reference. =)

    I’d call myself a python programmer, though I’ve played with Ruby now and again, mostly for text processing. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said its all about choosing good tools. Someone else may have a task that requires the hammer head to fly off…for them its great!

20. 

    Craig 1 day later:

    > Roach was supposed to be MVC, > but the “M” part was lacking as > it had no integrated database > functionality

    FYI: The M in MVC does not imply ORM.

21. 

    Carl 1 day later:

    So Ruby is a broken hammer? I guess that is close to a pick ax.

    If it is that broken – it took me 6 months to feel “productive” in Ruby coming from Java – how long will it take in Python?

22. 

    Mathew 1 day later:

    Very interesting post.

23. 

    n d 1 day later:

    nice name dropping.

    this post is riddled with crazed name dropping and technology hopping insanity.

    why would you cry foul that a windows .exe that you compiled from a non-standard executable maker (rubyscript2exe) didn’t work the way you expected on a windows system?

    Did the original Ruby creators create that tool? NO. So why would you judge your Ruby experience on your lack of knowledge of to make a windows executable? Windows executables no matter where or how they are compiled are far from stable, and you can’t blame Ruby’s language or run-times for a Windows issue you had.

    To that, it seems all of your experiences are based on your view that technology should be magical, in that random sites you download random software that is used for simple tasks, should work 100% of the time for complicated concepts you just happen to try out one day on a windows system.

    That is some very irrational thought you are analyzing your Ruby experience with.

    I see this often with Java aficionados of varying types that expect the world to align perfectly in some rigorous planet alignment where Windows applications always work, and one true messianic language will appear to you.

    what bull.

24. 

    Paul 1 day later:

    If you are in a JVM environment, check out Groovy. Should solve your cross platforms issues.

25. 

    Hank 1 day later:

    Great writeup. I have to say that I agree with a lot of it, but I’m still a Ruby guy. I used python for quite a while, and I can’t stand that whitespacing, lack of ternary operator, lack of ||=, and the lack of a regex type that perl and ruby have. Otherwise, I would probably switch too, but this is ridiculous:

    <pre> expression5 = re.compile( r”t[aeiou]”, re.I ) </pre>

    Compared to this: <pre> expression5 = /t[aeiou]/i </pre>

    Maybe if Python quits forcing spacing on me I’ll switch, but until then, it’s perl, ruby, and PHP for me.

26. 

    rcoder 1 day later:

    I found this very interesting, considering that I came to Ruby by way of Java, then Python. For me, the expressiveness of the language outweighs the differences in runtime performance, but even a serious Ruby partisan like me can see that the collection of bolted-on chunks of C being used to work around issues in the core runtime (fastthread, mongrel, etc.) is starting to get unweildly.

    I think that JRuby and Rubinus are going to drive a lot of innovation in the Ruby runtime space, but Rubinus in particular just isn’t there yet. For the time being, I’m starting to empathize a lot more with those poor Perl folk I’ve heckled so mercilessly over the last five years or so while they waited for Perl 6.

27. 

    Brantley 1 day later:

    The whitespace complaint is incredibly naive to a Python programmer. Perhaps it’s like a leap of faith, once you trust Python it becomes second nature.

    However, it will be interesting to see what happens when PyPy becomes ready for prime time. You’ll be able to program with just about any language and run it with a custom Python runtime.

28. 

    Peter Cooper 1 day later:

    As someone who’s a big (but objective) Ruby fan who’s taken a look at Python a few times and is now seriously considering using it in several projects.. I see a big gulf between the two and a big opportunity for collaboration.

    Python appears to have a significant lead when it comes to integration, low-level stuff, writing network daemons, and the really “tight” programming needed in many situations. It also seems to have a MAJOR advantage when writing GUI apps due to its native threading support and better GUI library integration (even Apple have tutorials on using Python and PyObjC to make OS X apps) compared to Ruby’s nasty GUI libraries.

    Ruby, on the other hand, is more flexible, seems to have a cuter, fun-oriented community with a “TMTOWTDI” attitude and a real attitude for getting things done albeit not in the most standard ways possible.

    For my part, I think I’m going to get into Python for the low-level daemon stuff and the ability to write decent GUI apps (my attempts in Ruby have been a nightmare), but I’m sticking with Ruby for anything self contained, or for Web apps.

    I mean, if both a Ruby app and a Python app are talking to a MySQL database.. who cares what each part is written in, right? There’s a lot of room to use both technologies, particularly in the Web 2.0 sphere where you could write, say, a feed reader in Python, but have a Rails app provide the view, etc.

    And.. I finally think I dig the whitespace thing in Python, but for that piece of elegance, of course, you have oodles of verbosity that Ruby doesn’t have (endless use of ‘self’ being one).

29. 

    Mat Schaffer 1 day later:

    @Peter Cooper

    I vote this goes on Ruby Inside :)

    We can’t fix problems we try to hide.

30. 

    O. E. Parker 1 day later:

    @asd:

    I believe the idioms are “iron-clad” and “set in stone”, meaning respectively armored with metal and embedded in rock.

31. 

    vnjug 1 day later:

    For web applications, go PHP. Twitter.com will be much more scalable if it is written using PHP. People behind Twitter has chosen a wrong technology. Both Python and Ruby is not good web solutions

32. 

    Eldon Alameda 1 day later:

    Really interesting post and seemed to be very well thought out. I’ve been using Ruby and Rails professionally for just under the last two years and (luckily) haven’t run into the major issues like that yet.

    I do think it’s time for me to spend some time learning another language though and i was planning on spending some time at the end of this year to try out Erlang but your post was convincing enough that I think I may add Python back onto the list of possibilities.

33. 

    Vasudev Ram 1 day later:

    As someone who’s worked to some extent in both Python and Ruby, here’s my 2c (not really much related to the points in the original post, just sharing my thoughts …):

    Having to use self a lot in Python is a bit of a pain – I agree.

    Apart from that, though, the readability of Python code is, IMO, really high – reasonably well-written code reads almost like English. I feel that this is a good benefit, but not one due to which I’d give up Ruby. Ruby’s readability is quite good too, but it trails that of Python to some extent, due to some of the additional special characters it uses (and I don’t mean regex characters).

    Vasudev Ram http://www.dancingbison.com http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf

34. 

    BS 1 day later:

    What a bunch of crock. I’m a C++ & PHP (if you could say that) programmer and I know a bit of Java and Perl, who is learning Ruby right now. It’s great. I’m truly in love.

    My Python exp. is limited to what I learned in school and I was too impressed with it, but I will not judge based on that.

    What I will ask thou:

    1) Why do you blame your lack of knowledge on tools? In your own post – you blame ruby for striking out – but then you mention that you didn’t solve <b>your</b> problem till later?

    2) You mention that you are using the language and framework (btw you use framework and language interchangeably in a couple of place – and they are not the same) for something that they weren’t designed for. Again how is it Ruby problem.

    3) Ruby is known for problems with memory management in certain cases. That is why it is mostly used in a context of web developing and small scripts (ie cron) – why would you use it for a mission critical stand alone application??? There is perl & C++ and pletny of other languages for that. I wouldn’t use python for that – just look at Civ IV if you need reasons.

35. 

    frosty 1 day later:

    Nice write-up Toby, but you know I’m gonna have to rewrite your app as an obfuscated Perl one-liner in the shape of your head now.

    Ugly? Sheesh.

    Seriously though, I’m surprised your interest in GOOG hadn’t turned you on to Python earlier.

    Now you’re a Python guy, you should check out Bob Ippolito’s blog: http://bob.pythonmac.org/

    He’s the dude behind my favorite Javascript library, MochiKit.

36. 

    Marcus 1 day later:

    Great post, greater title. I’m new to Python from PHP and I’m loving every minute of it. Love to hear more about your Python experience, especially beyond the web.

37. 

    winston 1 day later:

    Rather than writing a cheap rant that is intended to drive traffic to your blog and start a flame war, why not contribute some code to Rubinius or even some dollars?

    You mentioned that Ruby is a better language but has some runtime quirks that can cause problems for cross-platform or high performance uses…

    Punchline: Ruby is a great language for 98% of programming tasks.

    I have tried to learn Python and found it almost as annoying and counterintuitive as Perl, while I learned Ruby quite well in a few days.

38. 

    Li Evans 1 day later:

    Great run down on the issues Toby, and it was even easy for me to understand – even though I’ve been out of coding for a few years.

    Now I’m looking forward to seeing the end results! :)

39. 

    Marc-André 1 day later:

    Thanks for this post! I was playing already a while with the idea to turn away from PHP to Python, because i need more then PHP can provide (even with it’s CMD capabilities). But i was also looking after Java (despiting the fact that i know about the issues you mentioned in the begin of your post) and so i searched for a comparision between Java and Python – so i came here. Ruby was for me never an option because it is for me nothing more then PHP – just in another Language. Now i just need to take my time to change little after little to Python, and like you said, the manuals provided are very good (like i’m used to by PHP). Greetings!

40. 

    John 1 day later:

    Regarding not wanting to have to support the Perl code long term: Perl code written to today’s best practices looks good. The bad rap Perl gets is because of some of the bad old stuff floating around out there with all package globals and no comments.

    As for it being butt-ugly, ... I can only guess you mean mean something about the structure, because the syntax seems nice enough.

    One comment I don’t get at all is that it’s mnemonically taxing. The Perl keywords and function names were very carefully chosen, and they seem to make very good sense to me. Maybe there’s a lot of them, but many look like they do on Unix anyway. And besides, you’re either learning top-level function names, or else wads of method names—take your pick.

41. 

    John 1 day later:

    Whoops. Hope I didn’t sound like a fanboy there. Perl’s got its problems too (ex. I try not to go near typeglobs or ties, and Perl OO takes some work to get used to. Also threading with Perl doesn’t look like a picnic either).

    Anyhow, great blog article. Thanks for writing. :)

42. 

    devdanke 1 day later:

    Great post Toby.

    For many people Ruby’s syntax and SmallTalk-ish-ness is the real draw. You can often write code better and faster in a language that feels right.

    I don’t like Python’s syntax, especially having to use the word “self” when defining classes. However, a lot more effort has gone into Python over the years and it shows. Python is ready for prime-time in most any area you need it to run.

    Ruby isn’t to this point yet. It will take years for it to get there.

    So for now, Python is the #1 scripting language for all purposes in all places. It’s combination of being easy to read and it’s efficient vm and libs, make it hard to beat.

    PERL is, of course, unacceptable because only a few people on the planet can actually read and understand a PERL script they themself wrote 10 minutes after writing it;-)

43. 

    Teenwag 1 day later:

    <a href=”http://teenwag.com” rel=”nofollow”>Teenwag</a> was first built on Ruby on rails. It took 3.5 months, and then it was ported to python in a mere 2 weeks, RoR is a toy …. :)

44. 

    Teenwag 1 day later:

    http://teenwag.com

45. 

    Mr eel 2 days later:

    @teenwag:

    You mean to say it took you 2 weeks to port it after you’d already established the design, functionality and UI in your Rails app.

    Porting is distinctly different to starting from scratch.

46. 

    David 2 days later:

    Many of the languages discussed here are ad hoc, informally specified scripting languages developed by groups on the margins of computing. I guess they’re ok for a quick script but building full on apps out of them verges on the irresponsible. Consider using languages like scheme, haskell, ml or erlang. These all have deep roots and are extremely powerful.

    I dont know ruby – but I wasted years on perl (and shell/awk/sed ) then python before I saw the light.

47. 

    kevin 2 days later:

    Perl is not unreadable. People can not read it. These statements are not equivalent. Cyrillic script is unreadable to me, but of this does not mean that those languages are not to be used. There is the nauseating stench of dogma that is beginning to permeate the language continuum. ( Rails fanboys, “Perl is unreadable” whiners, i am talking to you ). Unsurprising, since dogma is making a big comeback all over the West. Unecessary. Perl’s problems are it’s internals, and it’s memory usage, understandable given it’s roots. I love using Ruby, and I love this article. I’ll still use ruby ( offloading to Erlang of course to avoid having my bra snapped under heavy load… ) however, it’s good to see intelligent critique of Ruby. I think these problems are fixable, or have workarounds ( Perl/Python better on windows, even though Perl is a distillation of unix mentality for example )

48. 

    trans 2 days later:

    NOOOOOOOOO! I’m about to swing for strike three too! I pray that the issue is only for HTTPS and not HTTP. Otherwise, I will have to switch to Python too :(

49. 

    Terry 2 days later:

    A correction to the common misconception repeated in comments 33 & 42: Using ‘self’ to access instance parameters is a standard convention for public code but it is not required. ‘Me’, ‘this’, or any non-English equivalent, or simply a minimal ’s’ works fine. That is a small price for consistency of name reference.

    And welcome to Python from an occasional user. One reason the core runtime is pretty solid is that Guido has tried to keep the codebase relatively clean, organized, and maintainable, even if it means rejecting a patch or requiring a rewrite.

50. 

    Peter Cooper 2 days later:

    “Many of the languages discussed here are ad hoc, informally specified scripting languages developed by groups on the margins of computing. I guess they’re ok for a quick script but building full on apps out of them verges on the irresponsible. Consider using languages like scheme, haskell, ml or erlang. These all have deep roots and are extremely powerful.”

    They are, but your main point seems to be either a troll or flamebait to me. You seem to be suggesting that Ruby, Python, PHP and similar languages are little-used fringe languages, when in fact it’s Haskell, ML and Scheme that are rarely used for actual applications.

    Academic success and rigor does not equal large uptake. Even Ruby’s tiny ecosystem is like the Western Cwm compared to Haskell’s.

    ...

    And Perl’s problems aren’t just its internals.. its absolutely horrid support for object orientation is the biggest issue. It feels like stepping into the stone age to do things like length($string) rather than $string.length.. and I’m a Perl fan!

51. 

    NK 2 days later:

    I enjoyed your post. I work quite a bit in PHP and have recently been considering playing with Python. Any suggestions on how to get started?

    Thanks.

52. 

    q 2 days later:

    Python for HTTPS? Last I checked, urllib didn’t actually check the server certificates—making the encryption essentially worthless. You might want to check that…

53. 

    deepfall 2 days later:

    I am also a ruby expat that moved to python. Originally from java, then found rails, then found django! Django just felt like home for me I guess. Keep an open mind!

54. 

    the exodus, 2 days later:

    begun it has!

55. 

    Vijay 2 days later:

    “Ruby for text processing” ... everybody seems to say that every language is good for text processing: Python, Ruby, Perl, Awk…

56. 

    John 2 days later:

    > Any suggestions on how to get started?

    Start at the beginning: http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html

    Also, as for books, Alex Martelli’s Python in a Nutshell is very good.

57. 

    Andreas 4 days later:

    I’m wondering where you will head to after Python… ;-)

58. 

    </a> 6 days later:

    Teenwag was first built on Ruby on rails. It took 3.5 months, and then it was ported to python in a mere 2 weeks, RoR is a toy …. :)

59. 

    Phillip Ryals 8 days later:

    I’ve never really understood why there are so many out there who flame Python so quickly… it’s always nice to come across someone who recognizes it for the potential gains you can get.

    One of the largest benefits, I think you touched on nicely, is the number of libraries available for Python. The Twisted framework is great, and there are so many others too.

    Welcome to the world of Python! :)

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