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Originally Posted by nemesis
In the end ruby is just another language like python or C#, its all object oriented. There is ruby on rails which is meant to be good for dynamic web pages, but for most other stuff there is no advantage over using python or perl. It all depends on which syntax you like the best.
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I disagree. It's not just about the syntax, it's about the featureset as well. Ruby, for instance, has support for continuations and blocks, whilst Python does not. Perl has better closure scoping, as variable declaration can be made explicit via
my. In Ruby, the object model is central to the language; in Perl, it's more of an add-on extra.
Many differences can be found in featureset, efficiency and philosophy. In terms of programming ethos, Python and Perl are diametrically opposed. And this is amongst languages that are relatively similar. Compare Ruby to Java or C# and the differences become so extensive that one really needs to learn both languages to fully understand the disparity involved.
Of course, there's a lot of stuff that's similar, but that shouldn't blind the student to what's different. Knowing how languages differ from each other is rather important. If you don't know the differences, how can you intelligently choose which language is best to solve a particular problem?