What is Ruby?

In this article, I will give a detailed answer to the question “What is Ruby?”, discuss the benefits of this programming language, and provide some tips on how to learn it.

In this article

1. What Is Ruby?
2. What is Ruby on Rails?
3. Advantages of Ruby
4. The Popularity of Ruby
5. How to Learn Ruby?
6. Frequently Asked Questions on the Ruby Programming Language

What Is Ruby?

Ruby is a popular open-source programming language. Here are a few interesting facts about it:

• Yukihiro Matsumoto, a Japanese computer scientist and programmer, created the Ruby language.
• His main objective was to create a language that was good for both functional programming and imperative programming. These two are distinct programming paradigms, operating as follows:
  • Functional programming caters to a functional approach to problem-solving. Imperative programming requires developers to use statements to change a program’s state.
  • Imperative programming is also known as procedural programming. Read more about their difference in “How to wrap your imperative brain around functional reactive programming in RxJava”.
• To achieve his objective, Matsumoto took components of multiple programming languages like Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, and Ada.
• The first release of Ruby was in 1995.
• It is a true object-oriented language. Everything in Ruby is an object. Coders can assign properties and actions to every bit of information. Moreover, Ruby supports instance variable access, etc.
• It’s a dynamically-typed language, i.e., the majority of the type-checking happens during the runtime. Read more about dynamically-typed languages in this Stack Overflow Q&A thread.
• It is a serverside scripting language like Python.
• It is a flexible language. Developers can alter its parts.
• It‘s free to use, modify, and distribute.
• Programmers can attach a closure to any method, and this closure is called a ’block‘. Blocks offer a lot of flexibility.
• A good number of SDKs and tools are available for web development. Some examples are Ruby’s package manager and RubyGems.

What is Ruby on Rails?

We can‘t talk about Ruby without touching upon Ruby on Rails. A few interesting facts about it are as follows:

• Ruby on Rails is among the popular web development frameworks built on Ruby.
• David Heinemeier Hansson, a Danish programmer, created this open-source framework. The first release was in December 2005.
• Ruby on Rails simplifies web application development. It uses 9 basic principles to achieve this aim, e.g., “Optimize for programmer happiness”, “Convention over configuration”, etc. Read more about these in “The Rails Doctrine” written by Hansson.
• GitHub, Airbnb, Shopify, Twitch, SoundCloud, and Zendesk are a few famous applications built on Ruby on Rails.

Advantages of Ruby

Ruby offers quite a few advantages for developers. These are as follows:

• It’s a high-level language, therefore, it handles the machine-level complexities.
• Programmers need to write less code.
• Matsumoto wanted to make programming enjoyable. Ruby originated in Japan, where coders initially used it to create games. It is fun to use, therefore, developers have intrinsic motivation.
• It reads like language, as a result, it‘s easy to learn.
• It‘s a flexible language since there are no hard rules to build features.
• There is a vibrant developer community, therefore, programmers get excellent support.

Read more about these advantages in this article.

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The Popularity of Ruby

Ruby remains a popular language decades after its release, as the following facts indicate:

• TIOBE index lists it among the top 20 popular programming languages. Read more about this in the “TIOBE index”.
• In a Statista report Ruby also ranks among the top 20 programming languages.
• A significant number of software development students continue to learn Ruby despite a highly competitive programming language landscape. Read more about this in “Report: despite high JavaScript demand, student devs learning Ruby and Python”.
• Ruby on Rails remains a popular web application framework for startups. Read “Why do so many startups use Ruby on Rails?” for more details.

How to Learn Ruby?

Programmers interested in learning Ruby can take advantage of the following popular Udemy courses:

• “Learn to code with Ruby”: A good tutorial for beginners, this is a comprehensive course. It includes modules on solving common coding challenges with Ruby. The course also shows how to handle strings, arrays, hashes, and other objects.
• “Ruby programming for beginners”: Another popular course, this has source code and sample test files that learners can download. This extensive course also includes an eBook and interactive quizzes.
• “The complete Ruby on Rails developer course”: A highly popular course created and taught by top-rated Udemy instructors, it enables developers to learn Ruby on Rails in detail. It covers prototyping, moreover, it focuses on designing and building web apps.

Planning for Your Next Software Application Project?

If you are looking forward to developing a software app that stands out in the user market, you can do it successfully using Ruby, given its popularity among startups and businesses.

However, to take up your development project efficiently without any waste of resources in terms of cost and time, you must engage a professional software development company with sufficient experience in building innovative software applications using the latest technologies.

If you as a business CEO or CTO are still looking for such a competent software development partner, then why not consider the expert software developers community at DevTeam.Space. Send us your initial software specification details via this form and one of our account managers will get back to you shortly.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Ruby Programming Language