Ruby

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Ruby is a dynamic, open-source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It was created in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan. Ruby is known for its elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.

History

Ruby was conceived on February 24, 1993, and was publicly released in 1995. Matsumoto wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than Python. Ruby has since grown in popularity and has a large and active community.

Features

Ruby is a general-purpose programming language that supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural programming, object-oriented programming, and functional programming. Some of its key features include:

• Object-oriented: Everything in Ruby is an object, including primitive data types.
• Dynamic typing and duck typing: Ruby uses dynamic typing and duck typing, which allows for more flexibility in coding.
• Garbage collection: Ruby has an automatic garbage collection mechanism to manage memory.
• Rich libraries: Ruby comes with a rich set of libraries, known as the Ruby Standard Library.
• Metaprogramming: Ruby supports metaprogramming, allowing the program to modify its own structure and behavior at runtime.

Syntax

Ruby's syntax is designed to be intuitive and easy to read. Here is a simple example of a Ruby program:

 puts 'Hello, world!'

This program prints "Hello, world!" to the console.

Ruby on Rails

One of the most popular applications of Ruby is the Ruby on Rails framework, often simply called Rails. Rails is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. It is designed to make programming web applications easier by making assumptions about what every developer needs to get started.

Community and Development

Ruby has a vibrant community with many conferences, user groups, and online forums. The language is continuously being developed, with new versions released regularly. The official implementation of Ruby is MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter), but there are other implementations like JRuby, Rubinius, and TruffleRuby.

Related Pages

• Yukihiro Matsumoto
• Programming language
• Object-oriented programming
• Ruby on Rails
• Python (programming language)
• Perl
• JRuby
• Rubinius
• TruffleRuby

See Also

• List of programming languages
• Comparison of programming languages
• Dynamic programming language
• Functional programming