What is Ruby?

Ruby is unique among object-oriented scripting languages.  It was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. In a sense, it's a purist's language for those who love object-oriented languages.

 Everything, without exception, is automatically an object, whereas in other programming languages this isn't true.

There are libraries for building all types of applications with Ruby: XML parsers, GUI bindings, networking protocols, game libraries and more. Ruby programmers also have access to the powerful RubyGems program. Comparable to Perl's CPAN, RubyGems makes it easy to import other programmers' libraries into your own programs.

The name "Ruby”

The name "Ruby" originated during an online chat session between Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka on February 24, 1993, before any code had been written for the language. Initially two names were proposed: "Coral" and "Ruby". Matsumoto chose the latter in a later e-mail to Ishitsuka. Matsumoto later noted a factor in choosing the name "Ruby" – it was the birthstone of one of his colleagues.

Applications and Tools Needed for Ruby

·         The Ruby interpreter

·         A text editor such as Notepad++, Scite or Vim. Word processors such as Wordpad or Microsoft Word are not suitable.

·         Command-line access. Though the details of this differ from platform to platform, Linux, Windows and OSX all have this available without any extra downloads or software installation.

Releases of Ruby

Following the release of Ruby 0.95 in 1995, several versions of Ruby were released in the following years:

·         Ruby 1.0: December 25, 1996

·         Ruby 1.2: December 1998

·         Ruby 1.4: August 1999

·         Ruby 1.6: September 2000

·         Ruby 1.8 : August 2003

·         Ruby 1.9 : December 2007

·         Ruby 1.9.3 :  October 31, 2011

·         Ruby 2.0.0 : February 24, 2013

·         Ruby 2.1.0 : December 25 2013

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