Ruby as a dynamic, general-purpose programming language has come a long way for developers that sought for a true object-oriented language for extensive projects. Conceptualized back in 1993 by “Matz Matsumoto”, the language largely emphasizes on the significance of simplicity and a powerful scripting structure. It enables users to quickly create web applications (although the framework shares certain similarities with Python). It is also highly efficient and powerful in crafting high performance, scalable web applications on the fly.
Integrated with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface, Ruby lends support to several programming paradigms and provides efficient automatic memory management for an enriched user experience. However, the language significantly drew its influence from five other programming languages - Eiffel, Ada, Perl, Smalltalk, and Lisp. The design of Ruby carries a potent resemblance to Lisp (a minimalistic language), practical components to Perl, and an object system to Smalltalk. The blocks of the language are further inspired by higher order functions. So, it’s like a Hybrid language having all the dominating features of these five with elimination of their crap and recessive features.
The Name ‘Ruby’
Yukihiro Matz Matsumoto named Ruby after one of his colleagues July’s birthstone. At the outset, Coral and Ruby were proposed as two distinct names for the framework, however, the latter was chosen for a reason close to Matsumoto. But who knew the future of Ruby then, except Ruby itself?
Early Concept and First Publication
Simplicity, high performance, and authenticity are some of the most important components of Ruby as a framework; sorry it was then a language only. In February 1993, Matsumoto was driven to conceptualize a programming language (like Python) that should be object-oriented and highly powerful as a scripting language (like Perl). The most dominant elements belonging to different programming languages were singled out by Ruby author and were made to assimilate into Ruby - which went on for its first public release on December 21, 1995. Past to which, the developers released three more versions of Ruby in two days. The language was designed to support an object-oriented structure, classes with inheritance, exception handling, closures, iterators, and garbage collection from the very beginning and even today it has those assets within itself.
Early Releases
After 0.95 as its foremost release (in 1995), the developers highlighted the performance and unveiled multiple stable versions of Ruby. Then Ruby 1.0 was released on December 25, 1996 followed by Ruby 1.2 in December, 1998. Later on, Ruby 1.4 in August 1999, & Ruby 1.6 in September 2000.
However, August 2003 witnessed the release of Ruby 1.8 that marked stability for a considerable time for Ruby as a scripting language (though it was retired in June 2013). The version forwarded with partial compatibility for Ruby 1.9 but has been the subject of various industry standards. Till then, it was limited to Japan only! But, brighter future was waiting for it with a smile from the western world.
Ruby in English
After pegging away at making Ruby a widely accessible platform, Ruby developers finally enabled the English variant of Ruby on December 7, 1998. This was considered as a huge milestone for the ones who would speak another language and led to the broader accessibility of Ruby around the world. This is turned out as a game changer for Ruby. The fate of Ruby changed with this venture in no time. Something that was hidden for quite long within a small zone, finally come across the world of IT and it gained terrific support and love from the industry.
Ruby on Rails
Interestingly, though the demand for Ruby soon swelled to a massive degree in 2005 and surged in tandem with Ruby on Rails development services. The latter is basically a high-performance web application framework (written in Ruby) that has contributed to popularizing Ruby and is known as the biggest turning point in Ruby’s journey to a grander successful.
The year 2005 even witnessed Apple’s move to ship the framework with their Mac OS X operating system ‘Leopard’. As a result, the sphere of web development yet again observed a sharp rise in Ruby’s reputation as an imperative scripting language. Over the years, a large number of programmers have contributed to enhancing Ruby and it sure has improved tremendously in terms of its paradigm support, dynamic type system, and of course automatic memory management. The language suddenly changed into a language- framework duo in a single shot! Most importantly, it gained overwhelming popularity in the industry due to its easy to use approach and time saving components for which the industry was craving for quite some time.
The Philosophy
Ruby is creative, simple to use, and productive as a framework. Hence, the initial idea by Matsumoto was to develop a language that provides a hassle-free user interface, high productivity, and fun is a reality now. Ruby focuses primarily on computer engineers and developers expectations for productivity combined with top notch ease and fun. Prior to that, they were focused for the machine level synthesize only. But, with Ruby their approach of handling system gets changed! It follows POLA - a Principle of Least Astonishment, which fundamentally focuses on minimizing confusion for experienced users.
Features
Ruby provides a horde of useful functions for users - starting from its object-oriented structure which comes with inheritance, mixins, and metaclasses. The framework embeds support for duck typing (dynamic typing), default arguments, first-class continuations, and operator overloading. Other prominent features include -
:: A flexible syntax that helps trim down syntactic noise and comes handy for domain-specific languages
:: Support for four levels of variable scope (instance, class, global, and local) symbolized by sigils
:: Support for garbage collection and embedding code in strings
:: Built-in support for complex numbers, rational numbers, and arbitrary-precision arithmetic
:: Interactive Ruby Shell
:: Custom dispatch behavior
:: Native plug-in API in C, native threads, and cooperative fibers
:: Exception handling, stringent Boolean coercion rules (everything is true except ‘false’ and ‘nil’), and centralized package management through RubyGems
:: Large standard library, comprising components for OpenSSL, RSS, YAML, JSON, XML, CGI, HTTP, FTP, curses, zlib, and Tk
Why Ruby?
There is no doubt that several programming languages have emerged in recent years; however, Ruby as an open-source programming language renders a thoroughly unique user experience. Developers of Ruby have always focused on enhancing their language and hopefully, it will continue further so in the years to come. And since it's widely supported, the web community largely benefits from Ruby - thanks to its focus on simplicity and productivity.
Mindfire's team of RoR developers has good experience and knowledge in RoR application development. Our rich expertise in Rails development has been developed in the course of delivering many Rails projects for our clients located in different parts of the world.
Integrated with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface, Ruby lends support to several programming paradigms and provides efficient automatic memory management for an enriched user experience. However, the language significantly drew its influence from five other programming languages - Eiffel, Ada, Perl, Smalltalk, and Lisp. The design of Ruby carries a potent resemblance to Lisp (a minimalistic language), practical components to Perl, and an object system to Smalltalk. The blocks of the language are further inspired by higher order functions. So, it’s like a Hybrid language having all the dominating features of these five with elimination of their crap and recessive features.The Name ‘Ruby’
Yukihiro Matz Matsumoto named Ruby after one of his colleagues July’s birthstone. At the outset, Coral and Ruby were proposed as two distinct names for the framework, however, the latter was chosen for a reason close to Matsumoto. But who knew the future of Ruby then, except Ruby itself?
Early Concept and First Publication
Simplicity, high performance, and authenticity are some of the most important components of Ruby as a framework; sorry it was then a language only. In February 1993, Matsumoto was driven to conceptualize a programming language (like Python) that should be object-oriented and highly powerful as a scripting language (like Perl). The most dominant elements belonging to different programming languages were singled out by Ruby author and were made to assimilate into Ruby - which went on for its first public release on December 21, 1995. Past to which, the developers released three more versions of Ruby in two days. The language was designed to support an object-oriented structure, classes with inheritance, exception handling, closures, iterators, and garbage collection from the very beginning and even today it has those assets within itself.
Early Releases
After 0.95 as its foremost release (in 1995), the developers highlighted the performance and unveiled multiple stable versions of Ruby. Then Ruby 1.0 was released on December 25, 1996 followed by Ruby 1.2 in December, 1998. Later on, Ruby 1.4 in August 1999, & Ruby 1.6 in September 2000.
However, August 2003 witnessed the release of Ruby 1.8 that marked stability for a considerable time for Ruby as a scripting language (though it was retired in June 2013). The version forwarded with partial compatibility for Ruby 1.9 but has been the subject of various industry standards. Till then, it was limited to Japan only! But, brighter future was waiting for it with a smile from the western world.
Ruby in English
After pegging away at making Ruby a widely accessible platform, Ruby developers finally enabled the English variant of Ruby on December 7, 1998. This was considered as a huge milestone for the ones who would speak another language and led to the broader accessibility of Ruby around the world. This is turned out as a game changer for Ruby. The fate of Ruby changed with this venture in no time. Something that was hidden for quite long within a small zone, finally come across the world of IT and it gained terrific support and love from the industry.
Ruby on Rails
Interestingly, though the demand for Ruby soon swelled to a massive degree in 2005 and surged in tandem with Ruby on Rails development services. The latter is basically a high-performance web application framework (written in Ruby) that has contributed to popularizing Ruby and is known as the biggest turning point in Ruby’s journey to a grander successful.
The year 2005 even witnessed Apple’s move to ship the framework with their Mac OS X operating system ‘Leopard’. As a result, the sphere of web development yet again observed a sharp rise in Ruby’s reputation as an imperative scripting language. Over the years, a large number of programmers have contributed to enhancing Ruby and it sure has improved tremendously in terms of its paradigm support, dynamic type system, and of course automatic memory management. The language suddenly changed into a language- framework duo in a single shot! Most importantly, it gained overwhelming popularity in the industry due to its easy to use approach and time saving components for which the industry was craving for quite some time.
The Philosophy
Ruby is creative, simple to use, and productive as a framework. Hence, the initial idea by Matsumoto was to develop a language that provides a hassle-free user interface, high productivity, and fun is a reality now. Ruby focuses primarily on computer engineers and developers expectations for productivity combined with top notch ease and fun. Prior to that, they were focused for the machine level synthesize only. But, with Ruby their approach of handling system gets changed! It follows POLA - a Principle of Least Astonishment, which fundamentally focuses on minimizing confusion for experienced users.
Features
Ruby provides a horde of useful functions for users - starting from its object-oriented structure which comes with inheritance, mixins, and metaclasses. The framework embeds support for duck typing (dynamic typing), default arguments, first-class continuations, and operator overloading. Other prominent features include -
:: A flexible syntax that helps trim down syntactic noise and comes handy for domain-specific languages
:: Support for four levels of variable scope (instance, class, global, and local) symbolized by sigils
:: Support for garbage collection and embedding code in strings
:: Built-in support for complex numbers, rational numbers, and arbitrary-precision arithmetic
:: Interactive Ruby Shell
:: Custom dispatch behavior
:: Native plug-in API in C, native threads, and cooperative fibers
:: Exception handling, stringent Boolean coercion rules (everything is true except ‘false’ and ‘nil’), and centralized package management through RubyGems
:: Large standard library, comprising components for OpenSSL, RSS, YAML, JSON, XML, CGI, HTTP, FTP, curses, zlib, and Tk
Why Ruby?
There is no doubt that several programming languages have emerged in recent years; however, Ruby as an open-source programming language renders a thoroughly unique user experience. Developers of Ruby have always focused on enhancing their language and hopefully, it will continue further so in the years to come. And since it's widely supported, the web community largely benefits from Ruby - thanks to its focus on simplicity and productivity.
Mindfire's team of RoR developers has good experience and knowledge in RoR application development. Our rich expertise in Rails development has been developed in the course of delivering many Rails projects for our clients located in different parts of the world.
