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Ruby vs Python: Key Similarities and Differences

By IncludeHelp Last updated : November 16, 2024

Ruby vs Python

If we talk about Ruby and Python, they both are high-level programming languages. They both have some similarities and dissimilarities on the other hand. Let us talk about their similarities first.

Similarities of Ruby and Python

• You can develop software from both of them and distribute them without paying any kind of license fees.
• Both the languages are high-level scripting language which means you don’t need to compile their programs.
• Both the language provides you to use any variable without declaring it first, it means that they are dynamically typed or it can be said that the data type of variable is decided by the data it contains.
• Ruby and Python are easy to use by the distributed teams where few people might be working on Linux and some may be working with Windows. They both provide the feature of "Cross-platform".
• Both the languages are used for developing web applications and are a server-side scripting language.

Dissimilarities of Ruby and Python

• Learning the languages: If we talk about, how fast one can grasp the concepts of Ruby and Python, then one can find that Python is easy to learn in comparison with Ruby. Python is quicker to learn.
• Object-Oriented: When it comes to Python, it is not fully object-oriented but in Ruby, everything is considered as an object. So we can conclude that Ruby is a fully object-oriented programming language.
• IDEs: You can write a python program in multiple Integrated development environments but You can only use ExclipseIDE to write and run a Ruby code.
• Mixins: Ruby supports the concept of mixins whereas it is not supported in Python.
• Frameworks for Web development: Ruby uses Ruby on Rails for developing web applications whereas Python uses Django.
• Library: Python is rich in the library in comparison with Ruby. You get more predefined functions in Python’s library. Ruby does have methods but they are less in numbers.
• Unset a variable: In python, as long as the variable is in scope, it is present in the symbol table, whereas, in Ruby, a variable cannot be unset if it is set for once.
• Anonymous method: In Ruby, blocks, procs, and lambdas are supported whereas in Python only lambdas are supported in the form of anonymous methods.
• Modification: In Ruby, you can modify the built-in classes as per your requirements whereas this is not the case of Python.
• Usage: Google, Dropbox, Instagram, Mozilla, Yahoo, Venom, YouTube are some application which works through python whereas applications like Apple, GitHub and Twitter use Ruby.