Hacker News Reader

> the system Ruby (which is almost always very outdated), really gets in the way

This also applies to Perl and especially Python. While relying on system Perl is bad but not terrible (Perl is very backward compatible, has good versioning of features, ...), I always have to fight against Mac users that keep using the outdated system Python instead of pulling a new one from Brew. Don't use the system interpreters folks! This is not Linux

View on HN

The advice applies to Linux, too. The interpreter that "comes with the system" is usually there to accommodate other software within the distribution that is powered by that interpreter, and it's not guaranteed to stay where it is as you like it, or update when you want it updated, because there might be an application keeping it from getting updated.

It really depends, though. On rolling releases such as Arch Linux it's basically the latest version most of the time, so you can often just roll with it and get stuff done. On Debian and the like, absolutely, you shouldn't be using the system wide interpreters

Reply on news.ycombinator.com