I really really didn't like Ruby when I tried to learn it at work , but Python just clicked. I imagine many Ruby programers migrated to Python.
Then again, Nodejs started to take off when Ruby declined. I strongly suspect this is due to all the "full stack" positions. Hey Billy, you write all that nice js on the front end, now you can write it on the back end too.
Not my experience being involved with the community. Indeed, there seems to be rather less migration between the two communities than than other languages (e.g. Python + Go, or Ruby + Elixir) probably by virtue of their similar problem spaces and approaches.
I'm a Rubyist who also knows some Python and while I admire Python, I certainly prefer Ruby. Python is flexible and fantastic in many ways, but is a far less consistent language in terms of organization (e.g. you use methods for some things, functions for others) which didn't click with me. If you want to do something with an array/list in Ruby, say, 95% of the time it's "arr.method" whereas in Python it might be len(arr) or arr.method, a comprehension, etc.
Not at all, they used to be competitors in the web space but Python won the academia space. Python is taught at university in Europe, Ruby far less.
Node.js is a mess, not because of javascript but all these layers of complexity imposed by professional front-end development, and on the server because Node.js standard library is pretty poor. I shouldn't have to use a third party library just to parse a multipart http request or work with cookies...
Go in that domain is just examplary. The std lib even comes with a Go parser, which is just invaluable for implementing code analysis tools, and it's very easy to do so.
Subjectively, I’ve been using Python since version 1.5? on classic Mac OS — but I’ve never liked it much. Always feels like a struggle to do basic flow control. Ruby really clicked for me. The ‘_why the lucky stiff’ quote really resonates: it’s the language Buddha would have programmed in.
I'm using the perspective of the whole programming language landscape. Take Python and Ruby and sit them next to Haskell, or SQL, or Prolog, or best yet, all of them at once. Even within just the "dynamically typed languages" they are the most similar to each other.
Syntax is one of their greater differences when sat next to each other, but much less impressively different when considered in the whole landscape. Syntax glosses on virtually identical semantics.
The coolest thing about Ruby is that the language paradigm is very internally consistent - everything, absolutely everything, is just objects and methods. The language has very few core constructs, but they can be composed together very fluidly to create all kinds of rich abstractions. People who dislike Ruby generally dislike this specific aspect -- it tempts programmers sitting atop mount stupid to go nuts with meta programming and try to make "magical" code when it isn't called for, and that's annoying to deal with on a team.
By comparison, in Python there are multiple paradigms and you need to learn where they apply. Why are things like `map` and `len` global functions, and why shouldn't we just call `__len__` on that object ourselves? Why do some functions for list processing take a list first and then a lambda, and some do it the other way? Why do you have to define self as the first argument for methods but you then just ignore that argument when calling the method? Why is it so hard to perform a relative import? Python is less consistent.
The other nice thing about Ruby is the elegance of it's closures and block passing - I miss that a lot when it's not present in other languages, and am always excited to see new(ish) languages like Kotlin embrace that paradigm. That, combined with the enumerable interface, make for great functional programming and list processing in Ruby. The alternatives in Python are certainly functional, but feel clunky to me.
On the other hand, Python has better semantics around named versus positional arguments, better type annotations, and decorators, each of which I would love to see in Ruby but for many reasons don't expect to. Python's import system allows more control over the global namespace, which is very nice. And lastly, Python has become the de-facto academic language which has led to it's fantastic ecosystem growth. Python is everywhere and there's a python driver or library for everything. Ruby has a good ecosystem, but not near as good as Python.
As for the bit about Node, the rise of Node and relative decline of Ruby are the same phenomenon, it was the full-stack web hipsters that had powered the rapid rise of Ruby moving onto Node that helped Node rise quickly as well. There were valid reasons, specifically 99% of Ruby developers also need to be proficient in Javascript, but the two languages are quite different, and many engineers felt (reasonably) that it would be nice to just pick one and have it work across the stack. Well, the browser doesn't run Ruby. Also, Node's evented model is a good fit for precisely the kind of IO-bound stuff that's a bit harder in Ruby.
But mostly, the hot-new-thing wave follows a pattern of enthusiastic adoption and evangelism, then over-adoption, followed by cynicism when the things that were built in hotlang don't scale up as well as their enthusiastic early adopters hoped, followed by the embrace of next hotlang and the trashing of *previous hotlang. So Ruby had to ride that out and calm back down into just being a normal programming language again. Meanwhile here comes Deno... ;)
I've lost many hours trying to get relative imports to work. It might be the one thing about Python I absolutely hate.
But Node doesn't do this well either, maybe it's just the nature of dynamically typed languages. The two programming languages I enjoy the most would probably be C# and Dart / Flutter. Having types, like real types is essential when projects scale. However I only get to enjoy these programming languages in my spare time.
Personally I think Dart is everything I could ever want in a language. Being able to use types when I need to, and the freedom to use Dynamics when I just don't feel like creating a new class. If you haven't tried Dart yet it's like Java's younger sibling who's easier to get along with.
Here's a server side Dart framework
Not sure how mature it is, but if I ever have a need to build another backend server I'll try it. I tend to prefer managed solutions now like Google's Firebase, which integrates so well with Flutter ( obviously because Google has a vested interest in you using their services)
https://stablekernel.com/article/announcing-the-sunsetting-o...
I spent a bit of time looking for another project, but it looks like they're just isn't a whole lot of movement on this
Things that came more from Perl to ruby include: Ruby's syntax; first-class regex support; some rarely used features like the Perl-ish global variables and command-line options; just the idea of being an interpreted unix-friendly language executed like `ruby file.rb`.
I do think Python and ruby are very similar languages, in the whole universe of languages. I think that's not really because either influenced each other, but instead because both were invented at approximately the same time, to meet similar needs -- both as interpreted-not-compiled, edit-with-a-text-editor, with C-like syntax, etc.
Them both being so similar, I wonder what's behind things like "ruby just didn't click for me but then I loved Python" -- but then, I'm the same just opposite. I don't know if I'd say it didn't "click", but I much prefer ruby to python, hugely (and sadly at this point, I feel like a betamax enthusiast), despite knowing that they are basically similar languages.
Such as end and lower casing variables.
Another factor to mention, Python has some specific use cases, like machine learning which I can only effectively learn by using Python. I actually managed to secure a 30k pay raise by learning Python in my spare time.
Anything I can do in Ruby, I can already do in NodeJS. If I ever run across an employer who would offer 30k or 40k more for me to learn Ruby, I would definitely jump at the opportunity.