Two languages, too similar, competing in the same space.

[Paul Prescod]

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> 
>...
> 
>    Most people are not switching to Ruby from Python but from languages like
> Perl and C++, and Ruby is more than 10% better than those languages.

When people get tired of Perl, for whatever reason, there was a time
when Python was the next logical language. Now there is a choice and it
could go either way: Python could be a better choice because it is more
established, Ruby could be a better choice because it is syntactically
more like Perl.

> ...  I'll be
> quite happy if Ruby does achieve 'world-domination' and am forced to use as
> it is a much better language than most.

I claim that each of the languages hurts the other's bid for "world
domination" or even mainstream acceptance.

When programmers ask to write code in a scripting language, managers
will say: "You want us to write in one of those flavour-of-the-month
languages?" It seems the curse of the scripting language world to
forever fork off new languages just as older ones gain a little bit of
acceptance.

 Paul Prescod