It’s just inferior to Python, nobody is making a more complex argument than that. Why ever use Ruby when there’s a virtually identical system that’s faster with a bigger community.
Many Pythonistas are woefully ignorant of what's going on outside their siloed community.
[1] https://fidget-spinner.github.io/posts/jit-reflections.html
Immutable strings is a more popular programming language feature and Ruby has a mechanism for opting into that. It’s so commonplace that the complaint usually isn’t that a string can be modified, but rather that every source file includes a magic comment to prevent that. Besides data safety, the VM can optimize frozen strings, so popular linters will flip that setting on for you. String mutability isn’t a practical issue for modern codebases. And, as language design goes, it’s kinda nice not needing to use a parallel set of classes for mutable and immutable string data IMHO.
With that said, the magic comment is a wart and folks are looking at making immutable strings the default. But, there’s a strong desire to avoid breaking the world. The Ruby Core team is keen to keep the lessons learned from the Python 2 -> 3 migration in mind.
Not only a wart but a massive foot gun, not shared by any other language, as I said. It is incredibly common to create hash tables using strings as keys, and Ruby makes this dangerous by default.
> Having immutable objects by default isn’t incredibly commonplace outside of functional languages
They make it easy to create immutable objects. Python has tuples and immutable data classes. Strings are immutable.
> The Ruby Core team is keen to keep the lessons learned from the Python 2 -> 3 migration in mind.
In the meantime, this ridiculous foot gun that no other language shares exists. That is a fact, and the fix being hard does not make it any less of a fact.
As for a bigger community, what does that serve? The large python community adds misdirection and more voices to a language that lacks some basic features still. Async/sync code models are still being finalized whereas Ruby has been stable in this regard for 10+ years. Same with tooling - the Ruby side is more consistent and stable: Sidekiq for background jobs (Celery is barely coming to maturity), Bundler for dependencies (pip? poetry? uv?). Mature auth + other frameworks like Devise.
Having worked in both languages professionally, I strongly disagree with your take.
Somewhere along the line Python got all the momentum, and ruby got none and now python is better if you just want to get shit done.
But man. I wish it was the other way around. I have one code snippet that summarises what I dislike about python:
if input() == "dynamic scope?":
defined = "happyhappy"
print(defined)
Edit: in ruby it also works, but the variable is at least always defined.
How is this even a pro? I agree that Python scoping rules are frustrating, but tbh not sure if I would prefer Ruby's behavior in this case
In a lexically scoped language you don't define variables conditionally. What ruby does is also icky, but obviously the developers of both python and ruby wanted to save the developer an extra declaration. The ruby version is at least more correct from a lexical standpoint (it is set to nil if left "nondefined").
If you're going to make claims, support them.
In every test I've done, Ruby has been faster than Python. In my experience that's been the case since Ruby 1.9, with the move to YARV.
Nonetheless, it's still common for people to talk about the relative performance of the two languages, and to claim that Ruby is slower than Python. As someone who's actually tested this, it hasn't been true for 15 years.
There was a time in the history of Python when people who chose Python did so primarily because they found it beautiful or pleasant to work with. These are reasonable factors in choosing a language, and they continue to be popular reasons for choosing relatively unpopular languages today.
A related essay has made the rounds on HN before. It might be worth revisiting if this question is on your mind: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/10/26/python-is-a-volunt...