I'd say the biggest difference between Python and Ruby's is that Python's has a syntax, whereas Ruby's is a function call, this makes Ruby's more flexible since you can always replace it, add new arguments, or in other ways manipulate it. I'm not sure if that's what Armin is referring to though.
> I'd say the biggest difference between Python and Ruby's is that Python's has a syntax, whereas Ruby's is a function call
This is not true on two fronts.
First, the import statement is a convenient, hookable wrapper around the __import__ function. It's quite customizable already. See PEP302 which references and allows implementation of PEP273 (importing modules from Zip archives). Other points of reference include [0], [1] and [2]
Also, the biggest difference is that when you 'require', you require a filename (i.e the arbitrary content of a file in the filesystem), but when you 'import', you import objects from a namespace into a scope. The namespace is resolved as an item living in the filesystem. In Ruby I could require 'foo/bar' and it could create the constants Foo::Bar and Qux::Quux. I have no way to require Qux::Quux. Rails for example tries to autoload constants based on their names, but for all I know, the second I reference Foo::Bar, it could actually define Qux::Quux. Ruby encourages this style of programming, spreading extendable classes and modules around in multiple files, while Python decides that things should be contained and well-behaving, and not trivially pollute unrelated module namespaces.
My analysis is that by definition you just can't have both, and that either one has a set of benefits and drawbacks.
