Ruby vs Python: Choosing Your First Programming Language

Course Report and Bloc mentor Ben Neely dive into the classic question: "which programming language should I learn??" We'll cover the history, uses, community, and job prospects for two of the most popular languages taught at coding bootcamps.

Chapters:
0:00 - Meet the Expert Ben Neely
5:05 - Glossary of Terms
8:47 - Brief History of Ruby and Python
11:29 - All About Ruby
15:20 - Ruby Example
16:06 - All About Ruby on Rails
18:33 - Ruby and Ruby on Rails Community
20:45 - Ruby Job Market
22:09 - Ruby and Ruby on Rails Resources
23:49 - Ruby Projects by Bloc Bootcamp Students
30:54 - All About Python
37:24 - Python Example
37:52 - All About Django
40:12 - Famous Python Projects
41:05 - Python Community
41:54 - Python Job Market
42:43 - Python Resources

[erruiz]

Hi - this was VERY helpful. Thank you for holding this webinar and posting it. You ask wonderful questions .

[ninjaaron]

Cool video.

A few points from a Pythoneer:

- Python Standard Library. Python is famous for being a "batteries included" language because ships with a ton of code ready to be used. Ruby has gems to match, but it doesn't come with nearly as many toys out of the box. Not a huge deal, but worth noting.

- Domains. Python and Ruby are both general purpose, interpreted languages and are great for building your web app or gui application, and bad for making a 3D video game. They have similar features in each language, both are easy to write and good for dealing with complex data or writing simple administrative scripts. However, because they are used in different circles, the third-party libraries differ greatly. Because Python is more widely used in academic circles, it has best-in-class libraries not only for statistics, also for science, engineering, mathematics, linguistics etc. Again, this is not because the language itself is inherently better, but because the community is more diverse. on the same note, because the python community is full of C developers, there are many 3rd-party python modules written in C. I really feel like people who say Ruby and Python are good for the same things are coming from a web-centric viewpoint. I became interested in programming for linguistic research, and there is no comparison between the two in that domain. For scripting languages, Perl is the only other game in town (for linguistics, I mean).

- Another thing to consider when looking at programming languages is OS. Ruby is huge in the Mac community, and if someone is doing mac-related things (like writing a Cocoa app), ruby has much more mature tools. On Linux, python is king, and python is great for writing gtk and qt apps (thought ruby is decent for qt also). You will also find better support communities on Linux and Mac for Python and Ruby respectively. If you're a windows user... I guess learn C# or get a real operating system!

[abdurrahmanisk]

Cool guide for new beginners, btw spotify written two times at 40:05

[jacobmackenziewebsdale]

I thought the term "Eggs" was a reference to the Monty Python episode "Spam"

[olapaula]

you are just awsome ..ha ha
helpfull all the way

[cebraeker]

So for me I first learned HTML to build websites what would I use Ruby to build, and how does it as a language contrasts?

[rossgeography]

Lisp then Ruby / Clojure (or/and ES6 vanilla JavaScript)

[asdqwe]

It's simple, go for Python. Ruby allows for to many ways to over complicate things.

[JohnMichaelReed]

They're both horrible first languages. You have no idea what is going on. The best first language is C.