Is Python (Django) experience professionaly comparable to Ruby on Rails?

Question

I ask this because there seems to be a few more jobs available (at least by telecommute) in RoR. If an employer sees significant Python/Django experience on a resume, would it be plausible to believe that the developer would be able quickly learn Rails?

Answer 1

I can't speak for all organizations, but as a hiring manager where I work, yes. I am really interested in experience with MVC in general. The specific technology / framework doesn't concern me as much as the fact that you understand what a model/view/controller framework is good for, and when to use it.

That said, if I see RoR and Python/Django, I'm probably going to pigeon-hole you as a front-end developer and push you towards the web apps division as opposed to our infrastructure division.

Answer 2

I interviewed for a Rails job once. I had almost no experience in Rails, although I had a fair amount of experience with Python and Django. I told the interviewer this up front, and I still got through several rounds of interviews, since the technical guys figured I could pick up the Rails stuff easily enough. (Ultimately I didn't get the job. Ah, well.)

But it probably depends on who is interviewing you. Some people might see the experience as comparable, others might not.

Answer 3

My experience is, that the more languages and/or frameworks you know, the easier it is to learn a new language. So if you have pretty good experience in programming it shouldn't be a big problem.

Python and Ruby are both dynamic and completely object oriented Languages. Just the syntax is a little bit different. i.e. where python uses indention two mark blocks of code, ruby uses {|begin|then|do|... and }|end to mark the beginning and end of a block.

As far as I know Django is a little bit more low level like merb or sinatra. But Django embraces the MVC style. So there you must not learn something new.

But to really know how quickly you can learn RoR is just trying, it can be fun. Just try it out in some freetime. IMHO it can be very easy to learn, especially for someone experienced with other MVC frameworks with similar languages.