That’s my observation. I don’t know what it means.
It’s especially curious when you consider Objective-C and Ruby share a common ancestor (i.e. Smalltalk).
(Note: You’re not a “mac geek” unless you used macs or cubes before OS X happened..)
June 15th, 2006I’ve used Macs since OS 7 and I prefer Ruby. I don’t know why, but Python has just never interested me.
June 15th, 2006It’s quite possible my sample size is too small to make generalizations. But, hey, I’m not going to let proper statistics stand between me and point. 
I think one bit of evidence supporting my claim is the fact that the python cocoa bindings are quite a bit more mature and popular than the ruby bindings. That may very well be changing as ruby gains popularity, of course.
It will be interestig to see if Apple officially throws it weight behind either python or ruby (or something else entirely) as a higher-level alternative to objective-c.
June 15th, 2006I like both Ruby and Python. Maybe it’s because I’ve used Mac OS both before and after OS X?
June 20th, 2006In the Mac OS Classic days the MacPython package was well maintained. There was a Mac-specific installer, which made it very easy to get Python on your Mac. I imagine this has probably had a significant effect on the popularity of Python on the Mac.
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython/
From what Google tells me, there was has only been very limited support for Ruby on Mac OS Classic:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/18536
As for Ruby geeks liking Macs I would imagine that Ruby on Rails has skewed the Ruby developer user base so that the percentage of people who are building ‘web applications with a focus on user experience design’ would be higher than it is in other languages. And as a whole, I think it is safe to say that people who focus on user experience design like Macs.
June 20th, 2006Good points, Kevin. I think you’re probably right on both counts.
December 11th, 2007Depends on how big a geek you are. Took a while to get into Macs, didn’t own one until ‘96, but cut my programming teeth on old-skool NeXT hardware.
So, of course, I love Objective C
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VMUNIX Blues is written by me, Mark Mayo, in Vancouver, BC. I like unix, coding, and the web, and naturally most articles I write here have something to do with what I like. If commenting on an article isn’t your style, you can always email me — mark (at) vmunix.com.
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