[BioPython] Off-topic: BioRuby

[Johann Visagie]

Andrew Dalke on 2001-03-22 (Thu) at 21:11:21 -0700:
> 
> Perhaps Python is Ruby's closest competitor, but Ruby's
> closest competitor (IMHO, of course) is Perl.

[ Moving yet further off-topic... ]

Ruby actively markets itself as a replacement for Perl, something that
Python does not (explicitly) do.  There is a pitfall here (IMHO), and that is
that if you're actively luring users from Perl, you're going to have to
support the style of programming Perl users are used to.  And that's not a
good thing when you're trying to start with a clean slate and design a
"correct" language.

>It doesn't have what is to me one of the prime fetures of Python -
>readability.

When reading Ruby I try really hard to ignore the fact that I hate "begin ...
end", since that would be hypocritical of someone who tells those who object
to Python's whitespace (or Lisp's parentheses) that block delimeters are
merely non-fundamental sytanctic sugar.

On the plus side, the few Ruby tutorials I've briefly scanned through do seem
to indicate that it has a more consistent object structure even than Python.
Somewhat Smalltalk-like, indeed.

Not that I've ever tried to program in Ruby - though it's on my list of
languages to learn.

Another thing:  As you (Andrew) know, I spend quite a bit of time playing
with the FreeBSD ports collection, and I have to admit that in this
relatively large and representative selection of open source software, the
rate at which new Ruby modules are being committed has by far outstripped
that for new Python modules over the past 6 - 12 months.  Though that may be
an artefact of the fact that both Ruby and BSD are "big in Japan".

-- Johann