This is why I recommend Ruby over Python for web development. The difference between a blog posted code snippet and the wealth of mature, multiple contributor projects like https://github.com/propublica/upton
Python and Ruby have their places, I wouldnt say one is clearly better than the other.
The except: and continues is enough to cause a heartattack
Ruby's community is very pragmatic and Python's is more scientific. Most people I'm discussing learning programming with are interested in making something, and pragmatism is far better suited to their goals.
e.g. from my perspective, as someone who uses programming as a tool, writing my own scraper is boring (other scrapers work well enough for me). From my friend's perspective, writing a scraper is a fun experiment.