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Comment by lprtyc | Hacker News Reader

Ruby websites like GitHub generally seem nicer and more elegant that Python/Django ones like python.org or Instagram. The latter are clunky.

I wonder if the language influences the aesthetics. Python is boring and clunky as well.

Some people here criticize meta-programming. I was one of them until I read the gorgeous Homebrew configuration files. Of course, don't overdo it.

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I mean if we talk about the creators/inspiration around these languages we have creators of Ruby from Japan where things are tidy, elegant and mindful of others. An inspiration for the name of Python is from Monty Python creators of the Ministry of Silly Walks which is kinda clunky looking when you watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCLp7zodUiI

Thanks for reading my highly technical analysis.

Japanese web design certainly isn’t tidy or elegant

> I wonder if the language influences the aesthetics.

The community does. You’ll notice that JavaScript command line tools are much fancier than other languages, with emojis and cool spinners. Being that many JS programmers are web developers there’s a sense of aesthetics baked in the community. Other communities don’t have to care about “pretty” in their day-to-day so their tools reflect it.

The languages don't directly influence the aesthetics. Rather, there's a culture that precedes a language, and the audience it attracts, and it defines the marketing of that language, among other things. Of course, there's always interaction and mutual feedback. But I'm just saying I don't see this as the high order bit.

In the case of Ruby, in fact the culture didn't come from Ruby, but Ruby on Rails, which marketed almost exclusively to non-programmers. "Classic" programmers suck at design.

Probably just selection bias. Ruby is way more niche than Python so Ruby programmers are less likely to be complete beginners.

It's quite a bit problem for Python actually IMO. It is so popular among beginners that a lot of libraries and StackOverflow answers are beginner-quality.

Python is almost as good as Ruby. They have slightly different takes on a few things (taaaaabs) but you can easily jump from one to the other.

Almost being the key word here ;)

I tried testing in Python years ago and found the likes of PyTest etc to be light years behind what RSpec and even Minitest offer.

This! Python testing ergonomics are terrible, worse than Js.

It’s a reason I love Elixir.

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