I believe it is more of a personal choice than anything else. That said, here are the reasons I like Python more than Ruby.
* Namespaces - Ruby has namespaces but when you are reading some code it is very hard to figure out what got mixed into what. This may be more predominant in the Rails world than others. You can exactly know where each one of the classes and methods came from unless you are doing a 'from x import '
Clean code - I know that with most editors today, you can have clean code. But python's insistence on indentation makes the code appear clean and very readable. This was an excellent design decision.
* Method and class invocations need () - This view is very subjective. While ruby's method invocation style gives rise to a lot of DSLs, python's style of invocation means that there are no silly Proc objects. If you need to pass a function to another function just send its name. I am not saying that one way is better than the other but I like python's explicitness here.
* OpenStruct by default - This is one of the best design decisions ever. Python uses a very fast implementation of dict for its objects. That means you almost get a javascript kind of object without the clunkiness of javascript.
I am biased a little bit towards python as I learnt python first. I do love Ruby's DSLs but I have a heart for Clojure too, in this regard. And I am actually quite happy that Jython 2.5 has come out. I am a little disappointed that Jim jumped over to the IronPython and left Jython hanging. But thanks to him, Python is there on all the major platforms.
* Namespaces - Ruby has namespaces but when you are reading some code it is very hard to figure out what got mixed into what. This may be more predominant in the Rails world than others. You can exactly know where each one of the classes and methods came from unless you are doing a 'from x import '
Clean code - I know that with most editors today, you can have clean code. But python's insistence on indentation makes the code appear clean and very readable. This was an excellent design decision.
* Method and class invocations need () - This view is very subjective. While ruby's method invocation style gives rise to a lot of DSLs, python's style of invocation means that there are no silly Proc objects. If you need to pass a function to another function just send its name. I am not saying that one way is better than the other but I like python's explicitness here.
* OpenStruct by default - This is one of the best design decisions ever. Python uses a very fast implementation of dict for its objects. That means you almost get a javascript kind of object without the clunkiness of javascript.
I am biased a little bit towards python as I learnt python first. I do love Ruby's DSLs but I have a heart for Clojure too, in this regard. And I am actually quite happy that Jython 2.5 has come out. I am a little disappointed that Jim jumped over to the IronPython and left Jython hanging. But thanks to him, Python is there on all the major platforms.