Ruby
Elegant, productive, fun
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read 7 chapters Programming language
Created
1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto
Type
Dynamic, object-oriented, interpreted
Philosophy
Developer happiness
Best known for
Ruby on Rails
Used by
GitHub, Shopify, Basecamp, Airbnb
Key feature
Everything is an object
File extension
.rb
Best for
Web apps (Rails), scripting, prototyping
What is Ruby?
Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented language created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in 1995. It emphasises developer happiness — code that reads like natural language.
Why Ruby?
Ruby on Rails made web development fast and fun. GitHub, Shopify, and Basecamp all run on Ruby. If you want to build a web app quickly, Rails is still one of the fastest ways to get to production.
| Feature | Ruby | Python | JavaScript |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy | Developer happiness | Readability | Flexibility |
| Web framework | Rails (excellent) | Django (excellent) | Express (flexible) |
| Learning curve | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Speed | Slow | Slow | Fast (V8) |
| Best for | Web apps, rapid prototyping | Data science, AI | Web, APIs |
What you'll learn
| Chapter | What you'll know |
|---|---|
| Introduction | What Ruby is, how to run it |
| Methods | Blocks, procs, lambdas, each/map |
| Classes | OOP, open classes, mixins |
Start with introduction.