python vs. ruby with freeride refactoring
I’ve used Perl and python since the 80’s for various scripting things. Before Perl 5, I preferred Perl and have written many thousands of lines of Perl. I never totally grokked Perl 5’s OO stuff, and by then I wasn’t a sys admin anyway.
I switched to python for anything over 20 lines so that I could easily make changes later. If you’re not using Perl daily, at lot of details fade away. I wasn’t writing a lot of python.
Later, ruby came along. I didn’t bother learning it because I already have scripting languages. Ruby persisted and gathered users. It occasionally gets mentioned in smalltalk circles. Now that I’ve used smalltalk and eclipse refactoring, I actually prefer a good IDE. Python never had one. Now that I’ve discovered that ruby has which has a refactoring menu, makes it worth investigating.
One problem with handy little smalltalk programs is the difficulty of sharing them with non-smalltalk users. Ruby would be easier to share. If it’s easy to write as well, I would be sold!
