drmock

    Does 'Rube' have a negative connotation attached to it?

Yes, and it's been a common insult for at least a century: http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&...

    Do you have any numbers to back any of this up?

We don't need to look any further than this thread: 30 points on the initial Ruby/Rails-bashing rant that also insults Ruby developers, 6 points on tghw's comment that insults Ruby developers with outright name-calling. Par for the course.

    Could it just be that you aren't a Python programmer

No, considering I've been using python on and off for almost a decade now.

    your language

Or it could be that there is no "[my] language" and I'm just willing to call out rampant hypocrisy and language-bashing when I see it.

Honestly, I find it interesting that people assume someone doesn't use Python just because they call out Team Python on their non-stop trolling and language-bashing. "Either you're with us or against us," apparently. Big surprise.

    you're by far the flamiest person here.

Flamier than the person who called Ruby developers "Rubes" after claiming Python is friendly to other developers? Interesting.

    Python community leaders are not into bashing other languages routinely

Indeed, this is true. It's unfortunate that so many python developers don't follow suit.

Python is a dogmatic language. For the language, this is a good thing, helping it stay clean, simple and yet still powerful. But for the community, it breeds rabid fanboys, just like everything else that's dogmatic.

Ah, I see. So what you are tying to say is that the non-stop bashing of Perl, PHP and Ruby from Python developers should be interpreted as just a friendly "if [you don't like python], no worries."

After all, one would have to be a "Rube (that's what [Ruby developers are] called, right?)" to think that Python developers aren't friendly to people who don't worship Python.

    the party line seems to be "this is the way we do
    things, if you like what you see, come on in, if not, 
    no worries"

That is absolutely not the case; Python is the anti-TMTOWTDI. The Python community is very vocal and explicit about the conventions developers are expected to follow, more so than any other language I'm aware of: PEP 8, Zen of Python, non-stop critiques about whether some code is "pythonic" enough.