Will pay up to 228fg for an insightful reply

I have been taking the cs50 course at Harvard online.
but reading the learn-programming subreddit everyone seams to agree the fastest way to learn on your own is:
pick a problem you want to solve and dive right into the corresponding language head first. Rather than doing all the basics shit, learning c, memory shit, watching lectures.

Anyways i want to begin machine learning, one of the many projects i have in mind is a website/program that runs many regression, statistical analysis to find value in spreads throughout multiple sports.
I have a finance degree from a good school, but decided i will lose my fucking mind in banking, or climbing the corporate ladder instead of creating something of my own.

I am going to dive head first into python or ruby.

I hear Ruby is more flexible but can be a total fucking bitch

while Python is much simpler and easy to debug


Looking for advice on which to learn. I am not sure if python will be limiting at all vs Ruby, or if ruby is just a headache.

or are there other languages that are also applicable to ML and also more diversifiable

This post was edited by LAP4JSP on Dec 8 2017 01:06pm

PYTHON IS A GOOD LANGUAGE I WOULD DEFINITLY RECOMMEND
VERY SIMPLE BUT LOTS OF USEFUL LIBRARIES AND THE CODE IS MUCH SHORTER THAN C OR C++

NEVER USED RUBY THOUGH SO CANT REALLY TELL U MUCH ABOUT IT

If you are going to do a project with web development and machine learning then Python is an easy winner. Python vs ruby for web development is an ongoing debate. I use Python for web development and I really like it, but they are pretty comparable.

However, Python has way more support in the data science/machine learning community. Python and data science are basically inseparable. The scikit learn library for machine learning is very good, and and the pandas library is great for data manipulation.

To answer if Python is limiting compared to ruby, id say it's the other way around. Ruby is mostly used just for web development whereas Python is used for web development, serverside programming (e.g. Openstack), or for simple scripting.

I am biased as a Python user but it is also going to suit your needs better than ruby.

Is there any benefit to ruby?

or is it just superior in some web development

People are always debating about python vs ruby for web development. Both languages have their selling points I'm sure, but I don't know too much about the differences between them.

Ruby is so flexible you can alter how basic math works. Which can of course bite you in the ass and you shouldn't alter math. But you can divide by zero and spell out "SATAN" if you wish.

I know both but personal preference is strongly towards ruby. Working with it is a breeze and I much prefer its strong DSL support that shows especially in ORMs like Sequel.

Recently been using Golang too which is great option as well but takes more time to develop in. You get very safe and fast apps in return and language is very "do it right" oriented. Even coding style is usually enforced by gofmt .

This post was edited by nuvo on Dec 9 2017 04:49pm

if youre just beginning programming youre not gonna be able to jump into a big project. but as for learning goes, python is one of the best beginner languages to learn so i would go python just because you can learn programming faster and then dive into bigger projects.

my professor used to love python and HE KNOWS LIKE 6 LANGUAGES AND IS VERY ADEPT AT THEM ALL SO

6 isn't really a lot

Python!! It's in huge demand atm.....
Also it's great for beginners, and it has more uses

This post was edited by ferf on Dec 10 2017 05:41pm