What is Ruby and where it runs

What Ruby is

Ruby is a dynamic interpreted language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, known as Matz. You write plain text, and the Ruby interpreter runs it line by line with no compile step in between.

Everything in Ruby is an object, even numbers and strings, so you can call methods on any value. The Ruby hub page holds the Russian edition of these notes.

puts "Hello from Ruby" # prints Hello from Ruby puts 2 + 2 # prints 4

Where Ruby runs

Ruby runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, so one script can travel between machines with almost no changes. Developers use it for small automation scripts, command line tools, servers, and full web applications.

The interpreter itself can tell you which version is active through a built-in constant:

puts RUBY_VERSION # prints something like 3.2.2

Why learn Ruby

Ruby reads almost like plain English, which makes it a friendly first language. Short programs stay short, and the error messages usually point at the exact line that needs attention.

Ruby also teaches habits that transfer to other languages: objects, methods, blocks, and tests. Many teams still build products with Ruby on Rails, while others use plain Ruby for scripts and DevOps tasks.

Matz is nice

Matz designed Ruby for programmer happiness, and the community motto says it well: Matz is nice and so we are nice. Code should surprise you as little as possible and read from top to bottom with ease.

Here is a small taste of that readability. Even before you know the syntax, you can probably guess what happens next:

names = ["Ada", "Matz"] names.each do |name| puts name end

Next: Install Ruby and check the version

Article author: Arthur Isaev