Both Ruby and Python, have their strengths and weaknesses, and as others
have mentioned, it will come down to need and existing projects you want to
leverage.

We use both Python and Ruby internally.

Know your tools and their strengths and weaknesses.

My personal interested is more and more revolved around natural language
processing, and its potential in library based tools. Purging is quite
strong in computational linguistics and has useful libraries for natural
language processing.

Andrew
 On 30/07/2013 1:43 AM, "Joshua Welker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Not intending to start a language flame war/holy war here, but in the
> library coding community, is there a particular reason to use Ruby over
> Python or vice-versa? I am personally comfortable with Python, but I have
> noticed that there is a big Ruby following in Code4Lib and similar
> communities. Am I going to be able to contribute and work better with the
> community if I use Ruby rather than Python?
>
> I am 100% aware that there is no objective way to answer which of the two
> languages is the best. I am interested in the much more narrow question of
> which will work better for library-related scripting projects in terms of
> the following factors:
>
> -existing modules that I can re-use that are related to libraries (MARC
> tools, XML/RDF tools, modules released by major vendors, etc)
> -availability of help from others in the community
> -interest/ability of others to re-use my code
>
> Thanks.
>
> Josh Welker
> Information Technology Librarian
> James C. Kirkpatrick Library
> University of Central Missouri
> Warrensburg, MO 64093
> JCKL 2260
> 660.543.8022
>