Dear Python, Why Are You So Ugly? (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Dear Python, Why Are You So Ugly? (2012)

grokcode.com

31 pointsjrs9924 comments

I think it has to do with the crowd each language tends to attract.

One of the big draws for Python is NumPy and SciPy, so Python tends to attract more of the scientific/statistical community. They're more concerned about data and analysis than aesthetics.

Rails unarguably attracted a vast number of web designers (many trend-oriented, but the point stands) to Ruby by offering a low-impact way to learn some server-side dev. As a result, many of the people who write Ruby (especially on the web) are more design-oriented -- so they trend towards better aesthetics.

This is not a question of capability, nor of libraries, but of community. The almost-tragic part of this article is that it overlooks the fact that the design differences in the pages it links are implemented neither in python nor in ruby, but in HTML and CSS.

> Rails unarguably attracted a vast number of web designers

Why?

> low-impact way to learn some server-side dev

Ruby is not low-impact. There's this myth that Ruby is lightweight, easy to read, and simple to get into. I seriously question if any of the people who perpetuate this myth have ever actually attempted to program Ruby.

Ruby source code is incredibly ugly and difficult to read. There is so much "magic" going on that it is difficult to begin to even understand what the code is supposed to do [1].

Ruby's syntax is incredibly aggravating. I've found it damn near impossible to understand even trivial programs without consulting the manual every three or four tokens. Worse, the language is ambiguous: is that colon a symbol, or a dictionary mapping, or a ternary operator?

And this is leaving out that Ruby == Rails to a huge extent, so much of the documentation and examples that are out there are burdened by the further complexity of a large web application framework.

I've found Ruby so obtuse and unnatural that every time I've tried to learn it, I've quickly become so aggravated at the language's awful syntax and strange abstractions that I simply give up. If Ruby's warts are bad enough to make someone with my programming-heavy background desert it before making much headway, why did "Rails unarguably attract...a vast number of web designers"?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872899

Wow. I just read that link. That's.... amazing. I've always thought ruby looked inscrutable, but I figured it was just that I hadn't taken the time to bone up on the syntax.... but no, it really is amazingly bad. Thank you for preventing future me from wasting time trying to learn it.

On the left, I see content. On the right, I see crap that hides content. I'll take the left.

huh O.o?

Which part was unclear?

Websites, especially those concerning technical subjects, should convey meaningful information. The "Ruby" designs are, for the most part, substantially worse at doing so. Characteristics I note include excessive whitespace, limited contrast, and oversized headings/banners.

Could the Python sites be better? Sure, but they're already doing better than Ruby at their primary task: Conveying information.

Agree, my previous comment was a misunderstanding of your view point , since i didn't understand what was this "right" "left" and "crap" that you were talking about.

ossreality, you've been hellbanned for a month. No-one can see your comments.

This is an old article. While I definitely agree in general (some are stretched, like Google Apps vs Heroku), Python has been making a more concerted effort:

http://www.python.org/

That being said, I find Python stuff to be, while ugly, good at getting information across. And now, I find Node sites to be the best.

Because Ruby is for designer kiddies that need a way to serve their PSD templates.

is that suppose to be funny or at least coherent?

> the uglyness makes sites hard to navigate and hard to use

No, ease-of-use and beauty are different things, though often conflated in rants.

I've never used any of those sites so I cannot speak to that aspect, but as far as beauty is concerned in a lot of the examples the ruby site looks more trendy, possibly because they are newer, because python has been around for a bit longer?

Site-wide redesigns are rare for content-focused technical sites, especially volunteer-based open-source projects.

Python.org just got redesigned today!

I realize this is old, but I can't help but feel that comparing the personal homepages of the creators of two web frameworks and suggesting that the difference in design should have a say in which language it's best to pick borders on trolling…

There's something seriously wrong with this article -- it describes Python as ugly, but uses as its evidence the appearance of Python websites, not the language itself.

To a programmer who understands Python, how the Websites look isn't as central as it seems for the article's author.

To a mathematician who uses Python directly, or by way of Sage (http://www.sagemath.org/), the open-source Python-powered mathematical environment, the appearance of Python websites will mean even less.

It's all in one's exposure to the language. I think most Python users will rank the language ahead of the websites that describe the language.

Well, programmers are humans too and humans (mostly) like beautiful stuff, so there's a valid point in ruby being better at attracting and get people involved than Python does.

Having worked with both, this beauty thing also applies to library APIs. I found ruby libraries to have a lot more syntax sugar and better 'plug-and-playability' than Python tools. Ruby is just more fun.

Who cares, really?

Look at Slackware's website: http://www.slackware.com/ it looks the same as ten years ago. Why? Because it works.

It's a website, not a piece of art, I want to get information not hang it in the wall.

This old post appeared in HN the same day that python.org got redesigned. Is some kind of revenge?

Or a way to say "hey, look how far Python has come!"

Well that way is kinda a revenge, is a more subtle way of saying "hey, look at python know, in your face!".

Have you seen PHP?

PHP actually just got a redesign recently for their documentation. It's not too bad, but the comments part is still crazy unorganized as far as code snippets, etc.

Ruby is language geared for building websites. Python is language for scripting.

Why in the world Ruby resource websites would be better compared to ones Python has...

I would venture a guess, that people making websites tend to be better at making websites.

You're confusing Ruby and Rails. Ruby is also a general purpose scripting language. The OP was careful to only compare Rails with Django, Ruby with Python.

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