Interview: Mark "Markey" Kretschmann (Not the Gentoo Weekly News)

I think the "Python is the antichrist" sentiment stems from a sort of sibling envy. Python and
Ruby are similar enough to compete for the same 'niche', and Python has been 'winning' in the
sense of # of people using it, of libraries, integration with other tools, etc. Some Ruby
people resent that, and I can sort of understand them - if Python didn't exist, Ruby might be
where Python is now. Still, I hope that the 'antichrist' sentiment is only held by a minority,
because it is quite unproductive and inappropriate.

Regarding the languages themselves, again, the similarities are fairly big, when you compare
them both to, say, C. Perhaps the main practical difference is, as mentioned above, far more
support for Python with libraries, development of fascinating projects like PyPy, and so
forth. Syntax-wise, the most immediately-noticeable difference is Python's enforced
indentation, which most people either love or hate. Personally, I like it; both Python and
Ruby do well to remove the curly braces popular in other languages, but only Python goes one
step further and also removes the need to close indentations with "end" and so forth. Anything
that makes code shorter is good in my book.

There are lots of other small syntactical differences, that people argue about quite a lot
online, but again I'd stress the similarities.