The author has just decided to roll their own half baked script for some reason, there are plenty of libraries to help. Python is good for scraping, I released my own library recently[1] that I think hits a sweet spot but there are many others.<p>Python and Ruby have their places, I wouldnt say one is clearly better than the other.<p>1. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomforb.es&#x2F;scraping-websites-with-cyborg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomforb.es&#x2F;scraping-websites-with-cyborg</a>