Ruby is an interpreted, fully object-oriented programming language with strong dynamic typing. It combines a Perl-like syntax with an object-oriented approach. Also, some features are borrowed from the programming languages Python, Lisp, Dylan and CLU. The cross-platform implementation of the Ruby language interpreter is distributed under the terms of open source software. Code written in Ruby can be understood even by a person who does not understand programming. Projects such as Redmine, Twitter, Shopify, Basecamp, GitHub, Kickstarter, Airbnb and others have been created on RoR.

I often hear the question: is it worth learning Ruby? As a rule, the question is based on doubts: how easy it is to find a job with this specialization, whether there will be interesting projects, and so on and so forth. Ruby is a modern, constantly evolving programming language, there are a lot of applications for it. Surely you have heard about Chef, Vagrant, Homebrew, but most often we all hear about Rails. Here is a post with a commentary by the author of the framework about why you should learn Rails.

Of course, everyone decides for himself which tool to use. And there is no point in endlessly arguing about why one technology is better than another. I chose Ruby because it is an incredibly expressive and flexible language that allows you to solve the same problem in many ways.

According to Yukihiro Matsumoto, he wanted to make a programming language that he himself would enjoy working with. Matz also wanted the language to help programmers be productive and to do more with less. Finally, the language had to minimize surprises. This has evolved into the principle of least surprise, according to which the program should behave as the programmer expects.

As noted above, Ruby is an object-oriented programming language. The phrase "everything is an object" can convey how entities, including primitive ones, are considered in this language. All calculations are performed using methods that are called on objects. For example, to calculate the value 5 + 4, the + method is called on the Integer instance 5 with the object argument 4.

Yukihiro Matsumoto started working on Ruby in the early 90s. Matz knew Perl and Python, but decided to create a new object-oriented programming language. Matsumoto did not like Perl, as he considered it to be a toy and even esoteric language. And Python, according to Matsumoto, was not object-oriented enough. Matz is a fan of object-oriented approach, so he started working on a truly object-oriented and simple language.

Matz introduced the language in 1995. Ruby has become popular among Japanese developers, thanks in part to the ruby-list mailing list in Japanese. Already in the first versions of Ruby, there were distinctive features that have survived in the language to this day. This is an object-oriented design, the use of classes and inheritance, mixins, iterators, closures, garbage collector, exception handling.

In the late 90s, Ruby documentation appeared in English and an English-language ruby-talk forum. Thanks to this, the language became popular outside of Japan.

Matz says he created Ruby to make developers happy. To understand what is at stake, you need to get acquainted with the features of this language.