What Is Ruby?

Every programming language has its own personality, and Ruby's personality is warm and welcoming. Ruby was created in the 1990s by a programmer named Yukihiro Matsumoto, who is often called "Matz" by the Ruby community. Matz wanted a language that made programmers happy, not just one that made computers fast. That single idea shaped everything about how Ruby looks and feels.

Built for humans first

Ruby reads almost like plain English. Instead of forcing you to memorize strange symbols, Ruby lets you write code that looks like natural sentences. This makes it a wonderful language for absolute beginners, because you can often guess what a line of code does just by reading it out loud.

Where you will see Ruby in the real world

Ruby became famous around the world because of a web framework called Ruby on Rails, or just "Rails" for short. Rails is a set of tools built with Ruby that makes it much faster to build websites and web applications. Well-known websites started their lives on Rails, and many companies still use it today because it lets small teams build big things quickly.

In this course you will focus on the Ruby language itself. Later, in the final lesson, you will see exactly how the Ruby skills you are learning connect to building real websites with Rails.

Why beginners enjoy learning Ruby

• The code looks close to normal English, so it is easier to read.
• There are very few strange symbols to memorize compared to some other languages.
• It has a big, friendly community that has written thousands of helpful guides.
• The skills transfer directly into web development through Ruby on Rails.

Here is a tiny taste of what Ruby code looks like. Do not worry about understanding every part yet; you will write your very first program in the next lesson.

puts "Hello, Ruby!"