<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Dylan Northrup <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ale@doc-x.net" target="_blank">ale@doc-x.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 9:44 AM, James Sumners <<a href="mailto:james.sumners@gmail.com">james.sumners@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
</span><span class="">> That's an important bit of information. Under such circumstances my<br>
> preference is for Python. I just like the language better (truly, I can't<br>
> stand the sight of Ruby). As for contrived performance, they're pretty much<br>
> even -- <a href="http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/ruby.php" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/ruby.php</a><br>
<br>
</span>Glad to know you're using objective criteria for your evaluation of<br>
languages. I think semantically important white space is one of the<br>
stupidest ideas to ever be implemented in any scripting language and<br>
prefer Ruby over Python (having come to it from Perl). I also like<br>
flexibility in my approach to solving a problem, something that seems<br>
antithetical to the Python philosophy where there's One True Way to<br>
solve every problem.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't use Python very often, but I've never encountered a "One True Way" to do anything in it. Example, this question has multiple solutions -- <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/693630/alter-all-values-in-a-python-list-of-lists">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/693630/alter-all-values-in-a-python-list-of-lists</a></div><div><br></div><div>It's been so long since I even attempted to learn Ruby that I can't recall my exact qualms with the language. But being able to read the code is a rather large point as far as I'm concerned. And the "let's be as terse as we absolutely possibly can be" nature of Ruby makes it illegible to me.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
I do systems scripting for a large portion of my day job. I find a<br>
lot of the work I do is in bash/shell since "it's everywhere". The<br>
next fallback is ruby as we're a Chef shop and it's on all my systems</blockquote><div> </div><div>Yep. Most of my systems scripting is done in plain old Bash. It's only when the scripting is going to be more like a full fledged program that I resort to something else.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">
> One of the things to consider is who else will have to maintain your code?<br>
> Which languages do they prefer or are proficient with? Around my shop we've<br>
> had a Ruby guy leave which meant all his stuff died because no one knows the<br>
> language (or cares to).<br>
<br>
</span>Did his code do something important? Was it important to the business?<br>
If so, it doesn't matter whether or not someone "cares to" maintain<br>
it or not. Hell, there's a ton of code I'd love to re-write, but a)<br>
it works, b) it's business critical and c) I'm too busy doing other<br>
work to get into a pissing match about whether or not it's written in<br>
a bad language and needs to be re-done in a good language.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Most of it was an ad-hoc application to make management of a truly shitty application easier. But when you have 3 people to manage a whole university's backend systems development needs, figuring out strange platforms shifts way down on the list of important things.</div><div><br></div><div>So the application was just plain killed. </div></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>James Sumners<br><a href="http://james.sumners.info/" target="_blank">http://james.sumners.info/</a> (technical profile)</div><div><a href="http://jrfom.com/" target="_blank">http://jrfom.com/</a> (personal site)</div><div><a href="http://haplo.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">http://haplo.bandcamp.com/</a> (band page)</div></div></div></div></div>
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