What is "ruby"

Ruby is a dynamic object-oriented, interpreted, open source language with automatic memory management that combines the parts of Perl, Smalltalk and Lisp. It supports multiple programming paradigms as functional and imperative. Ruby focuses on simplicity and productivity.

The name "Ruby" originated during an online chat session between Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka on February 24, 1993, before any code was written into the language.

Source: http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/10/20/rubyconf-history-of-ruby/

  • Born 24th of February 1993. Without code!
  • Matz and Keiju-san proposed the name first.

The first release was version 0.95 on 21 December 1995. Version 1.0 was released in 1996. The current stable release is Version 2.0.0, released on its 20th anniversary on February 24, 2013.

Ruby "exploded" around 2005 due to Ruby on Rails, an MVC (Model, View, Controller) framework for building web applications.

You can download the Ruby source code from http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/(in English) or from Github.

How to use the tag

The tag Ruby is for issues related to:

  • The Ruby language,
  • Ruby syntax,
  • Ruby libraries, and
  • Anything to do with Ruby, except for Ruby on Rails.

Questions about Ruby on Rails nay shall be marked with whether the issue is specifically about Ruby on Rails, but rather with the tag .

Alternative implementations of Ruby

Always use implementation-specific tags when the problem is more specific.

  • Jruby, a Ruby implementation on top of Java with JVM access
  • Rubinius, a C implementation that is used for higher performance
  • Ruby Enterprise Edition, a Ruby MRI Fork for efficiency
  • Macruby, an implementation of Ruby for Apple Objective-C and Cocoa Framework
  • Maglev is an implementation on top of the Vmware Gemstone virtual machine
  • Ironruby is a Ruby implementation on top of the Microsoft . NET CLR/DLR platform.
  • Cardinal is a Ruby implementation for the Parrot virtual machine
  • Topaz is a Ruby implementation written in Python, on top of Rpython
  • Rubymotion is an implementation of Ruby to develop native OS X, Android and iOS applications

Knowledge base

Where to start

Learning Resources

Where to learn more about Ruby.

Online