Ask HN: Ruby or Python for 2018?

Have you looked at Elixir / Phoenix?

http://phoenixframework.org/

It has some Rails roots, so you might like it.

I would take a look at Laravel which is php on rails with less magic and more built in features such as authentication and background jobs. The most important thing is that its community is growing rapidly and it has a BDFL ala DHH in Taylor's Orwell. Also there are really good fresh resources such as latacasts Codecourse and the Laracon conferences

It's your side project, do whatever you want! You said ruby is fun for you then go with it.

You seem overly concerned with Hype Driven Development.

There's not a lot of new stuff coming out of these frameworks because of how mature they are.

Both languages/frameworks are comparable. Your end product will not be very different regardless which route you take. Both languages and frameworks will be maintained 10 years from now. The job market for both will exist 5+ years from now.

Pick one you like and get to work!

Python is a good career move. Ruby is more fun. There's no right answer :)

I program in Ruby right now for work but am comfortable switching to Python. There are plenty of Ruby positions available, we've hired 5 or so Junior Engineers out of Rails/JavaScript bootcamps. It's just that Python has the data science and machine learning positions in addition to web development.

For what it is worth, I think you will probably learn something from trying Ruby, even if you wind up sticking with Python. The community and language design are just very different from Python's: MINSWAN v BDFL, many ways versus Pythonic PEP's, everything is an object versus some things are objects, etc.

All this with the caveats that: I think both languages have advantages and disadvantages and I think knowing more languages is better than knowing fewer or one.

Ruby, PHP, Go, Python, Javascript & Elixir developer here:

The #1 rule that trumps all, no matter how small or big your project: Use whatever facilitates your work.

Sometimes you need to get things done quickly, sometimes you need to hire a lot of people cheaply/easily, sometimes you need a project to scale. In each of these cases, you may want to use a different tool. For something that's your side project, you probably just want to be able to get work done effectively and enjoy what you're doing. Pick that tool that you most enjoy working with, in that case.

For me, I default to Ruby (and I haven't touched Rails for work in 2 years!). I find it to be a joy to work with. I expect that later, as a I grow as a developer, this will become Elixir and/or Erlang. Sometimes I have to work in Python, because that makes sense for the project. I find it a bit of a slog, but it gets the job done and lets me move on to other things.

If you are a developer learning the ropes, I couldn't recommend a better language than Ruby. Your skills will translate. You will find work. The places that hire junior developers that only care that you know their stack aren't worth your time.

Most of the people that have publicly roasted Rails were wrong, for one reason or another, by the way (especially that Twitter blog post...). Too often, people are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The best advice I can give you after that first rule is that you should ignore what people say and just get your work done. That's the thing that differentiates people who stay working in this field and those who don't.

There are 2 choices of language for any side project.

1) the language you know best

2) the language you most want to learn

Only you can decide on which has a higher priority.

Stick to Ruby, Matz will give us new Ruby this christmas, and he's the best mormon I have ever seen so that's a plus.

If you're already comfortable in Python, don't bother with Ruby. You won't find anything new there, and a lot of frustrating language design errors. I've written about this in more detail at http://madhadron.com/posts/2013-02-25-a-criticism-of-ruby.ht....

I would say try out both and use the one that makes you happy and is the best tool for the job.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Rails and Flask and use both on a regular basis.

You may also want to give this a read:

https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/it-doesnt-matter-what-web-fra...

i have a simple suggestion, you should learn both, we live in a polyglot world now, you need to be able to learn multiple languages and to do so quickly. i started with php then moved to python/tornado/sqlalchemy, ror, ruby/sinatra/activerecord, nodejs/expressjs, and lately golang/gorilla mux/database/sql. just start with one, suggest ror, i’m sure you’ll have multiple projects in the future. ruby was built for web app development, django’s a bolt on for python that then added web functionality. dont worry about the community issues, ror has enough great libraries out there that you could put together a pretty slick website quickly. a side note, if you need to use some scientific packages, python might be better supported like numpy etc. fyi ruby language is much nicer than python imho (insert flame war). dont dwell on this decision too long, either should be able to get you what you want which is a slick website, get a move on it

> Rails is awesome but people hate Ruby

Is this sentiment common? It might be just my personal echo chamber but I've often heard the opposite stance, i.e. people saying they hate Rails because of all the "magic" but at the same time they like Ruby as a language because of its flexibility.

I love Ruby, but Python is super simple to learn. I haven't spent enough time with Python to do anything super cool with it, but it does seem to be more consistent in terms of the code you will read.

I also think that once you learn Python, a lot of other languages' syntax (such as Go and C# for me) becomes more approachable.

Python

Django, a highly competitive web framework. With great extensions like Django REST Framework. Assets with django-webpack-loader. So on. It may not be as good as Laravel or Rails, but they're all really active.

But the thing that makes Python best is the web framework is where it begins, not where it ends:

Want text analysis? NLTK or spaCy

Data? Pandas, numpy, pytables

Want more analysis? scikit-learn, tensorflow, theano.

Solid language standards? PEP8 and PEP257 makes most python code you see in open source very conformant

Test framework? pytest. And its plugins. tox for testing against a matrix of python versions/settings (kinda like Travis).

Handling environments + packages easily? pipenv

Multiple python versions? pyenv

Editor integration? Jedi + python-mode for VIM, VSCode, Atom, Python

Images / Graphics? pillow

Super-powered REPL? ptpython

Deployment? Fabric, Ansible, Saltstack

Documentation? Sphinx, Docutils

Want C/C++ integration/performance? pybind11, cython, CFFI, swig

Mobile dev? kivy (though I wouldn't say it's the best yet, when I tried it, setup was easier than react-native)

And that's just scratching the surface. Python has high quality, permissively-licensed libraries, with solid documentation. A lot of the plugins I mentioned above for handling data use C-level speedups. Of these, tensorflow, and Theano can use GPU speedups.

Rails is fantastic. I like guard and the asset pipeline. But I just learned to use GNU Make's "$ make -j task1 task2" and django-webpack-loader. I also hear good things about Laravel in PHP.

Python’s more broadly applicable, easier to read and maintain, installed by default on distributions. Pyramid is another good option if you have something against Django.

I have almost come to regret learning Ruby because it is a beautiful language that I wish it would be my main language but unfortunately I think it has lost scripting language race by the look of its popularity among competitors.

Part of the reason I suspect is the development cultural difference brought by language barriers. Without sound development, it surely will struggle to become better than alternatives.

https://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/4570470

Ruby’s beautiful object model alone is worth learning. “Metaprogramming Ruby”[0] is a great introduction to that. Its flexibility is what makes things like DSLs so easy. The language also includes functional programming influences. I wrote Django apps in Python for the better part of two years, and for what anecdotes are worth, I didn’t learn nearly as much as I did writing Rails applications in Ruby. I’d pick Ruby every time.

[0] https://pragprog.com/book/ppmetr/metaprogramming-ruby

I understand your concerns about Django and Flask... as someone who doesn't work with either on a regular basis, getting reacquainted with Django feels very heavy... and Flask seems too minimal.

Anyway, I just started using CherryPy for a new project and would like to recommend it. I had actually used it around 10 years ago and hadn't given it much thought until recently, but it's quite simple and nice for REST APIs.

I can't recall ever hearing anyone say they "hate Ruby".

Ruby is designed to make programmers happy.

Ruby and Rails are "boring" because they are mature and do their job extremely well, so the cutting-edge devs that helped get them there got bored and moved on to other newer ecosystems.

If you are more interested in getting the project done fast and efficiently and you don't mind doing it someone else's way, then RoR is a good choice.

If you like to do things your own way, then Rails will probably frustrate you because it is very opinionated on how things are done. You can override everything, but some people's personality is more suited for the node.js world that is far less of a framework and more of an ecosystem of libraries.

These are 2 popular posts that will help you figure out if RoR is a personality fit for you:

http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.htm...

https://medium.com/@timbuchwaldt/rails-is-boring-thats-great...

If you code alone, use the best available which generally I assume people would say Ruby.

If you are intending to collaborate then python might be a better choice as its more popular.

Just a different take. Either one is great.

I used to hate Ruby until I had to learn it two years ago. Now, I wish that this is the only language I'd ever need to use. It's beautiful, and testing stuff with it is a BREEZE.

Its Haskell.

I would prefer to pursue Python further for data scraping/analysis or bot development related things, PHP for Web apps and Go just for heck of it :>

Programming languages are just tools. People that are finding they are productive with a language/tool are out building things and not complaining.

I'm personally not someone that likes to look at new languages and compare them for the sake of it. There are folks that like to compare compilers or interpreters and the internals of how those work and debate them.

I'm more interested if something new can help me in delivery of working software. Having moved from a Java world to Ruby/Rails, I find it not just helps me deliver, it pretty much gets out of my way (most of the time) compared to Java.

I haven't done much more than read about Python/Django/Flask. If they are mostly similar to Ruby/Rails it doesn't sound like there would be benefit to learning them outside of curiosity (and an affinity to Monty Python).

I suspect that big name bloggers and people that talk a lot about things may find a need to keep viewers coming to their blogs/channels. If there isn't a lot of new stuff to write about but it is still a solid delivery platform, that isn't too exciting to draw viewers.