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Also, just a little disclaimer: This was a couple of years back (I forget how many, 5 or so) maybe the Ruby community changed, and it's also totally possible that I just happened to land on a rather "particular" region of the Ruby blogosphere, so take this cum grano salis. I had to make a choice and was about this close to just flipping a coin over it :)

ruby-talk used to have, as one of a number of perma-threads, the question of "Why Ruby over Python". The discussion was almost always entirely civil, with most people suggesting that the questioner try both for a bit and pick the one that clicked best.

I used to host (on ruby-doc.org) a page called "Ruby Eye for the Python Guy" that tried to summarise the comments and offer links to help folks make a decision.

The community on ruby-talk at that time (probably 5 years ago) was extremely polite and helpful, and I'm sorry you landed on some opinionated blog that likely only reflected a small group of developers.

I don't follow ruby-talk much any more, so I can't say how it is, but there has always been a pretty strong tradition of MINSWAN: "matz is nice so we are nice." I expect that's still encouraged. There are, of course, various sub-groups around this or that library or framework that may have zero exposure to that, think they're the shit, etc., but I hope people considering Ruby don't a priori dismiss the majority of Rubyists as rude because of bad reports about a handful of people.

OK, end of Ruby PSA.

Side note: I'm often puzzled by people who think a language or framework or whatever geek thing has to "win." Be happy for happy people.



Well, one issue is that with a language as popular as Python (or Ruby or Java...) it's relatively hard to avoid working with them. So it's actually very beneficial if a technology one likes becomes popular.


Call me a cynic, but I'm weirded out by the idea that the only reason for civility is to emulate an idol who is civil.


Call me a cynic, but I'm weirded out by the idea that the only reason for civility is to emulate an idol who is civil.

Idol? He's a nice guy who does admirable work and many people think it ungracious to be rude when publicly discussing his language.

Only reason? Geeks get into stupid pissing matches. Sometimes a little reminder is a good thing, that's all.




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