Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is a reflective, dynamic, object-oriented programming language. It combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like object-oriented features, and also shares some features with Python, Lisp, Dylan and CLU. Ruby is a single-pass, high-level interpreted language. It is focused on simplicity and productivity and has an easy to read and write syntax. Its main implementation is free software.

History

The language was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who started working on Ruby on February 24th, 1993, and released it to the public in 1995. The programming language was named after a colleague's birthstone. Its popularity has grown ever since the web application framework Ruby on Rails was released on 2004. As of March 2007, the latest stable version is 1.8.5. Ruby 1.9, which includes some major changes, is in development. Performance differences between the current Ruby implementation and other more entrenched programming languages has lead to the development of several virtual machines for Ruby. These include JRuby, an attempt to port Ruby to the Java platform, and Rubinius, an interpreter modeled after self-hosting Smalltalk virtual machines. The main developers have mainly focused on the virtual machine provided by the YARV project, which was merged into the Ruby source tree on December 31th, 2006, and will be released as a part of Ruby 2.0.

Syntax

Hello World

puts "Hello, world!"

or

puts 'Hello, world!'

Analysis of the example

Because Ruby is a high-level programming language, the Hello World program results in an extremely simple program, only having to include the puts expression followed by Hello, world! in quotation marks.

See also

• Ruby on Rails

External links

• Ruby Programming Language Homepage