Ruby on Rails versus Python

Question

Hi

I am in the field of data crunching and very soon might make a move to the world of web programming. Although I am fascinated both by Python and Ruby as both of them seem to be having every similar styles when it comes to writing business logic or data crunching logic.

But when I start googling for web development I start inclining towards Ruby on Rails my question is why is the web world obsessed with ruby on rails and active records so much?

There seem to be so many screencasts to learn Ruby on Rails and plethora of good books too why is Python not able to pull the crowd when it comes to creating screencasts or ORM's like active record.

regards
Edward

Answer 1

Ruby and Python are languages.

Rails is a framework.

So it is not really sensible to compare Ruby on Rails vs Python.

There are Python Frameworks out there you should take a look at for a more direct comparison - http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks (e.g. I know Django gets a lot of love, but there are others)

Edit: I've just had a google, there seem to be loads of Django Screencasts.

Answer 2

If you want Python screencasts, see ShowMeDo.com. I'm a co-founder, it is 3.5 yrs old and has over 400 Python screencasts (most are free) along with 600+ other free open-source topics: http://showmedo.com/videos/python

In the Python section (linked) you'll see videos for Django, the entire TurboGears v1 DVD (provided freely courtesy Kevin Dangoor, the project founder), Python CGI (old-skool), web-scraping and plenty more.

About 1/10th of the content is subscriber-only, the other 90% is created by 100 open-src authors with 100,000 users/month.

Note that both Kyran and myself (co-founders) are A.I./math researchers in the UK with strong academic connections. Many of the Python videos have some links with starting out in data processing, I'll be creating new series over the coming months focused on math/stats/graphing/science purely for Python to accompany those that are already present.

HTH, Ian.

Answer 3

Ruby and Python have more similarities than differences; the same is true for Rails and Django, which are the leading web frameworks in the respective languages.

Both languages and both frameworks are likely to be rewarding to work with - in personal, "fun" terms at least - I don't know what the job markets are like in the specific areas.

There are some similar questions in StackOverflow: you could do worse than clicking around the "Related" list in the right-hand sidebar to get more feel.

Best thing is to get and try both: pick a small project and build it both ways. Decide which you like better and go for it!

Answer 4

Ruby gets more attention than Python simply because Ruby has one clear favourite when it comes to web apps while Python has traditionally had a very splintered approach (Zope, Plone, Django, Pylons, Turbogears). The critical mass of having almost all developers using one system as opposed to a variety of individual ones does a lot for improving documentation, finding and removing bugs, building hype and buzz, and so on.

In actual language terms the two are very similar in all but syntax, and Python is more popular generally. Python's perhaps been hindered by being popular in its own right before web frameworks became a big deal, making it harder for the community to agree to concentrate on any single approach.