> That is an odd take on Python particularly, which has been widely lauded as a good language for exploratory coding - easy and quick to put something together and iterate on it.

I think the point your parent was trying to make is that, at least in Python, there is a lot of emphasis put on doing things the python way e.g. list comprehensions over loops.

For myself, the python experience is... mediocre.

Ruby feels so much better. Between the embracing of functional programming and the pry gem, it feels much nicer to use. Sadly, it's not the strong horse in the race.

Lot of emphasis by whom? Yes, certain constructs are subtly encouraged (by documentation, community blogs, etc.), but there is no python police to enforce the One True Way(tm). You can still write your quick&dirty prototype using not-quite-pythonic-python if you prefer, allowing you to move and iterate just as fast as in Lua or Ruby.

At least that's been my experience with Python (after reluctantly getting used to the indentation as part of syntax :) ). Of course, different languages will appeal to different people, so I do not doubt your claim that Ruby suits you better. But the post I was replying to above was putting Python in the same bag as C/C++, which to me seems very inaccurate.