ShowMeDo

I came across a site called ShowMeDo a few weeks ago and I have gotten hooked on it. It is a site where people have created short screencasts for different subjects. These videos include subjects such as Python programming, the TurboGears web framework, creating screencasts of your own, and even how to make a perfect cup of coffee. While you are there enter your email in the box on the side to be notified of any new videos that get created. If you are a Ruby programmer make a small video of some of the features of the language that you like and submit it to the site so all can benifit from it.

If you are on a Linux machine you can use pyvnc2swf to create your own videos. Check out this link to Linux.com to get an idea how to do it. If you are on Windows then I would recommend Camstudio2.o.  Both of these work very well and are FREE and opensource.

Python vs Ruby

Let me start by saying that I would never call myself a great or even a good programmer. I started programming with Perl about 3 years ago and the largest thing that I was involved in writing was about 1500 lines of code that had a gui (Tk) and wrote log files and interacted with PostgreSQL database. Then after writing that we got the idea to redo the whole thing in PHP to add more functionality.

OK, now that I have that out of the way, my problem is that I am trying to pick between Python and Ruby to be my new and primary language. I have books on each and have read them all. I have had very little experience with OOP so I struggle with that aspect some. Both of these languages have large user bases. Python is used quite a lot by Google, Gentoo and I read today that Ubuntu uses it as well. Ruby has a smaller following here in the U.S. but it is growing thanks to the Rails framework. Python also has a very nice framework called Django that I am very interested in. If anyone reads this and has some input as to which one to use (with good reasons) please tell me.

I am leaning toward Python right now and I am not totally turning my back on Perl. I will continue to use Perl as well because of CPAN. Once Python has a CPAN of its own that is as complete as Perls I may give up Perl for good.