What should I learn? Python or Ruby?

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Should I learn Ruby or Python?

Hi guys. I am a PHP developer so, mainly a web developer, and I'm used to work with MVC. I use CakePHP, which is a powerful PHP framework to develop web apps and such.

I'm comming from the web scene and I really want to keep my work on the web but I also would like to learn a new programming language to apply there. Not only that, but I also would like that this language would enable me to work offline with stand alone applications.

I really like Python and already know some stuff about it. The problem is that I don't see a really good tool to work with it on the web. Django, for me, has a terrible API and although we can find some other really cool projects like web.py, when I compare that to what I get with PHP and CakePHP, I don't get that excited.

On the other hand, we have Ruby which is a scripting language just like Python. I don't know how far you can go with desktop development with Ruby compared with Python. But I know that Rails is a extremely cool tool to use on webdev...

So my question is: should I learn Python or Ruby? If one or other, why? Thanks!

P.S.: My english can be a little bit confusing, but I guess you can understand [hopefully]

Answer 1

Don't like Django? Python has a lot of choices for working on the web. Some of them are listed at Fred's Shack.

Answer 2

Yahoo employee, Jeremy Zawodny, has asked the same question here. You can get a good insight of both languages from comments for his question.

Answer 3

This is a choice I had to make (also moving from php), and I chose ruby for its more elegant syntax, such as built-in literal regexps and hashes (Dicts in python?), as well as its powerful iterators.

I also did not like the extensive use of __name__ type method names, and don't like the whitespace restrictions.

As you can see, it was a 100% personal decision, I don't think there is a right answer here though, choosing what feels right is a safe choice!