Can somebody give me an advice about what to learn?

[Joshua Landau]

On 30 September 2012 13:58, tcgo <tomeuari at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi!
> I'm really new to Usenet/Newsgroups, but... I'd like to learn some new
> programming language, because I learnt a bit of Perl though its OOP is
> ugly. So, after searching a bit, I found Python and Ruby, and both of them
> are cute.
> So, assuming you'll say me "learn python", why should I learn it over Ruby?
> Thanks!
> PS: I don't want to start a flame-war, I just want an advice if it's
> possible please!
>

Like the others I don't know Ruby but a 2 minute check on Google implies
that Ruby doesn't have something equivalent to Cython.

I *really like* Cython because it lets me optimize without learning
C*. I *really
dislike* C, so this is important to me. Cython may be a bit much [aka. is
way too much] for someone learning a language, but it will help if you do
progress that much further. Of course, Ruby lets you write C extensions,
but that's another language to learn.

* You still have to learn C types, but Cython has better array classes and
support for Python buffers that lets you skip most of the harder types. You
don't need malloc in Cython, for example, unless you really need C arrays.

Python also has PyPy, which is faster than most of what Ruby has, pushing
that dreaded optimization down the road.

Language wise, *whilst again I cannot speak for Ruby*, Python has a very
important trait: sanity. If you slow yourself down enough, Python has a
miraculous ability to make the meaning of every line you write *bloody
obvious*. That's pretty much the most important part of a language. *Look
over code examples of both, and choose the language you can read.*
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