

Python or Ruby: 6 Months on Hacker News - japhyr
http://peak5390.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/python-or-ruby-6-months-on-hacker-news/

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B-Con
I agree that Python is a good language to learn and to teach as an
introduction.

But HN isn't quite the most reflective of the _job market_. It's reasonably
diverse, but how much interest does, say, .NET generate on here? Not much, but
.NET seems to be becoming impossible to avoid in the Windows programming
market.

HN also likes languages like Lisp. Do the jobs for Lisp even compare with jobs
available for Ruby?

I think HN stats will give you a decent idea of powerful and/or hacker-
friendly and/or elegant languages (those seem to be the favorites around here,
from my perspective), which are probably good languages to use as an
introduction, but not necessarily strongly correlated with market value.

Again, not that I disagree with the conclusion.

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cjmagee
It would be interesting to see a Python/Javascript comparison. I have a hunch
that the explosion of new tools-- js frameworks, node, mongodb, etc.-- is
going to lead to thousands of coders writing millions of small apps. Big
potential market for those students to come into.

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mathattack
Thanks! I wonder if there is a way to piece out trends better - for instance,
are influencers using Ruby?

That said, hard to go wrong teaching intro to CS in Python. It's flexible
enough to show most of what you want to teach.

