I hope we agree that ’semantically’ Python and Ruby are quite similar. They have a strong syntactical difference (Python is much more disciplined, and some operations have a neater syntax in Ruby — or vice versa). I was wondering how this syntactical differences influenced the pragmatic (that is to say the way we use the language).

My example is that although both languages allow to add methods dynamically to classes and to objects, this is done *very* often in Ruby (and Ruby has a neat syntax to do it), while in Python it is seldom done.

And I agree in what you say about the community. The Ruby community is great and is very good at marketing Ruby. I mean, everybody knew that MacOS X Leopard would include Rails and RubyCocoa. However, almost nobody knew it also includes PyObjC and Twisted (that is used in a new Apple application). (of course these are rumors — as far as I know –).

Names are of course a good way to sell things. And guys like Hansson are perfect to create hype. For example picture like [http://www.flickr.com/photos/eugevon/130610241/ this]… I mean here he’s not talking like a techie, but rather like a cool director or something like that.

However, I suppose there must be *more* than community. Otherwise it means that you don’t really need to create a good language with good libraries. Tomorrow I don’t want to be using a language because something got the idea to pretend some particularly sexy chicks created a very cool language…

for instance, take the issue of python’s anonymous functions (http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=147358). python’s bdfl considers the multi-line lambda unpythonic. now, unpythonic is not a programming issue; plenty of programmers all over the world use multi-line lambdas all the time. instead, being “unpythonic” is penalized socially; the python community discourages such steps in the language because they somehow feel that the simplicity of their language is more important than the multi-line lambda.

or take the social problems of lisp (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SocialProblemsOfLisp). the lisp community appears unapproachable, especially when the supposed “elders” of the community, who should be taking care of the newbies, give them trojans instead (http://social-problems-of-lisp.blogspot.com/2006/06/pascal-bourguignon-come-on-down.html).

why are people drawn to ruby? i bet that, for many people, it’s not the language, it’s the community. how many languages do you know have guys on board with weird names like why the lucky stiff (all praise the chunky bacon) (http://whytheluckystiff.net)? the wackiness is definitely part of the appeal; the duck typing less so.

Regarding ‘duck typing’ I suppose Alex was the first one to use the metaphor to describe the Python typing habits. But everybody knows about Dave, nobody about Alex.

About the mindset: in fact Python has been around for quite a lot of time. And it’s popularity grew constantly (and is still growing). Of course it changed the minds of those who used it. It influenced Ruby itself, other languages and programmers that are not strictly part of the Python community.

However, it was not well known outside the ‘unix open source community’. The popularity among programmers is quite good, but in the IT world it is not well known. I mean, in my country there has been only *one* translated Python book for years.

Moreover a lot of people who knew something about Python were likely to criticize the language because it is dynamically typed. And ‘true languages’ are statically typed. And because it is a ’scripting language’. And because ‘Java is the Way’.

Now a lot of the same people are interested in Ruby. This is something that I feel quite strange. I think it’s unlikely that you dislike Python telling it’s a ’scripting language’ and you like Ruby. That is the point of my question.

As for the duck typing thing.. I remember that this exact expression was attributed to dave thomas, but coined offline, the “if it walks like a duck it is a duck” thing is old english saying.

But otoh Dave knew python and Smalltalk before ruby, afaik..