[Tfug] Seeking advice: Language choice a7epy3ud

[Claude Jager-Rubinson]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 03:52:52AM -0700, John Gruenenfelder wrote:
> So, what would your choice be any why?  Right now I'm leaning towards Python
> for a couple of reasons.  The language and syntax, to me, reads and writes a
> bit easier than Ruby's.  Also, while there are some noted exceptions, Ruby
> seems almost entirely focused on Internet related programs whereas Python is
> much more widely used with libraries for all sorts of tasks.

The major downside to Python is that it's so popular that the online
signal:noise ratio is low.  The language itself is also not compact
(particularly when you consider the standard library, not to mention
PyPI) and tries to be a jack-of-all-trades (supporting multiple
programming paradigms, Perl-like TIMTOWTDI, various forms of syntactic
sugar, etc).  The dead-tree documentation is also fairly lousy (for
introductory/general texts; it's better for more specific texts).  (I
also really loathe how Python implements regexps, but that's probably
a personal idiosyncrasy.)