Ruby Programming Language
Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented programming language, which was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan. Known for its readability and ease of use, Ruby emphasizes simplicity and productivity, making it a favorite among developers for both scripting and full-scale application development.
History
- Ruby was first conceived in February 1993 by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who was inspired by languages like Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp.
- The first public release of Ruby, version 0.95, was in December 1995.
- Matsumoto released Ruby 1.0 in 1996, marking the official debut of the language.
- The Ruby community grew significantly with the release of Ruby on Rails in 2004, a web application framework that made Ruby more accessible for web development.
Features
- Dynamic Typing: Ruby uses dynamic typing, allowing for flexible variable assignment.
- Object-Oriented: Everything in Ruby is an object, even basic types like numbers and strings.
- Blocks and Iterators: Ruby supports blocks, closures, and iterators, which facilitate functional programming paradigms.
- Metaprogramming: Ruby's ability to write programs that write programs or modify themselves at runtime.
- Open Classes: Classes can be reopened and modified at runtime.
- Mixins: Ruby allows for the inclusion of modules, which can be used to mix in functionality to classes without inheritance.
Popularity and Use
Ruby gained significant popularity in the early 2000s, especially after the introduction of Ruby on Rails. Here are some key points:
- Many startups and companies like GitHub, Airbnb, and Shopify have used Ruby on Rails for their web applications.
- Ruby has a vibrant community that contributes to its extensive library of gems (libraries).
- It's often praised for its developer productivity, leading to the phrase "Developers write Ruby; Ruby writes Ruby."
Development Tools and Environment
- RubyGems is the package manager for Ruby, allowing easy installation of libraries.
- Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like RubyMine and text editors like Sublime Text with Ruby support are commonly used.
- RSpec is a popular testing framework for Ruby, promoting behavior-driven development (BDD).
External Links
Related Topics