Python Vs Ruby, which one to choose?

First thing comes in my mind, why to compare these two language only? This may be because both are interpreted, agile languages with an object oriented philosophy and very huge communities support. However, though both languages share some ideas, syntax elements and have almost the same features the two communities have nothing in common.

Both the languages are very popular among the developer’s community (This is also one of the reasons to compare). Below are the top ten most popular languages in 2018 on GitHub based on opened pull request −

Top 10 most popular languages on GitHub based on opened pull request

Head to Head Comparison between Python and Ruby

As the two programming languages are very popular among the coders. Let’s try to compare Python and ruby over different aspects.

	PYTHON	RUBY
LANGUAGE	More direct Created in 1991 by Guido Van Rossum	More magical Created in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto
PURPOSE	Python was designed to emphasize productivity and code reusability	Ruby was created to make programming more fun, efficient and flexible.
PROS	Very easy to learn & understand. Diverse set of libraries Documentation. A diverse community with big ties to Linux and academia	Tons of features out of the box for web development. Quick to embrace new things
CONS	Often very explicit and inelegant to read Weak in mobile computing	Can be very hard to debug at times. Weak documentation. Weak in mobile computing.
WEB FRAMEWORKS	Django most commonly used web-framework started in 2003 by Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison	Ruby on Rails most commonly used web-framework started in 2005 by David Heinemeier Hansson.
COMMUNITY	Very stable and diverse community but innovates slower Used Widely in academia and Linux	Innovates more often but that causes more things to break Very web focused.
USAGE	Google Youtube Pinterest Dropbox National Geographic The Washington Post	Github Twitter Apple Airbnb Shopify Groupon
Used for	Backend web development Data analysis Artificial Intelligence Scientific Computing	Web applications, web servers. System utilities Database work Backups, parsing.

Which one to Choose?

There is no one universally superior language above all, and each of them tend to be well suited to a particular domain of work.

There is not much difference between the Python and Ruby since these are very similar in nature, but have different approaches to solve problems.

Anything you can do in Python, you can also do it in Ruby and vice-versa. Which framework (django or Ruby on rails) is better isn’t more important than what the support is like for you and your teammates.

In general, if your project involved data science or you are interested in data science, Python should be your first choice because of its stable and widely used different data science libraries. However, if you plan on sticking with building web applications, then you may consider Ruby on Rails first, as there is very strong community built upon it and they are always on the bleeding edge. However, if you are more interested in building web application but would also like to learn a language that used more generally, check out python and django. As in python you will get much larger diverse community and lots of influence and support from the various industries that used it.