Ruby vs Python

I’ve always been a little afraid of Ruby. It seems to be getting a lot of press these days with projects like Ruby on Rails. I’ve looked at the language a little bit, but I just can’t get into it the way I have with Python. Today I read this article about people shuffling around from C++ to Java then on to Python or Ruby (actually the article a bit deeper than that, but go read it for yourself to get the full depth of it). While talking about Ruby the author made a comment that finally made me realize why I have been uneasy with the syntax of Ruby: ‘people who have come from Perl and found Ruby to be a “better Perl, with objects that work,”’ And that pretty much sums it up for me I think. I’m not a huge fan of Perl, and Ruby is more like Perl than anything. I’m still concerned that Ruby seems to be gaining popularity, but that’s mainly because I’m a bigger fan of Python. And now I have a better argument to defend myself with when I tell people that.