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The Ruby Programming Language is a dynamic, object-oriented language in which values are objects and method calls are resolved during execution. It is distinct from the software that runs it, the RubyGems package system and the Rails web framework.
Created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto and publicly released in 1995, Ruby is free to use, copy, modify and distribute. Perl was one of its historical influences. Matsumoto aimed to make Ruby feel natural to programmers; this is a design intention, not a guarantee of universal simplicity.
Objects, Dynamic Typing and Memory Management
Ruby values, including numbers, are objects. Objects provide behavior through methods—callable operations—and can hold state in instance variables, which store data associated with an individual object. Variables refer to objects without requiring declared static types. Types belong to the objects, not the variable names, so dynamic typing does not mean untyped data.
At a method call, the runtime—the software executing the program—determines whether the object supports the requested operation. A variable can refer to different types of objects at different times; an unsupported method call can fail during execution.
Automatic garbage collection reclaims ordinary managed object memory, so programmers do not free it manually. In CRuby’s mark-and-sweep model, the collector follows references from roots, such as accessible variables, marks reachable objects and can reclaim unmarked ones. Collector details and timing depend on the implementation; memory collection does not guarantee timely release of files or other external resources.
Blocks, Modules and Flexible Methods
Blocks in the Ruby Programming Language are pieces of code associated with method calls. The called method can invoke its block to run caller-supplied behavior. For example, a container’s each iterator passes successive elements to the block for processing.
A class supplies behavior to its objects, called instances; instance methods are methods called on those objects. Modules group reusable methods. Including a module in a class makes the module’s instance methods available to that class’s instances, a technique called a mixin. This shares behavior without multiple superclass inheritance: a Ruby class has at most one direct superclass.
Existing classes can be reopened to add methods, and existing methods can be redefined. Operators implemented as methods, such as +, can also have their behavior changed. Redefining shared behavior can affect other code that relies on it.
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Get startedRubyGems Packages and Rails
Gems are versioned software packages, not features of the Ruby Programming Language. They contain code, documentation and package metadata; RubyGems is the system used to install them, including Rails. A gem marked for the generic ruby platform is not tied to a particular native platform. Platform labels can depend on CPU architecture, operating-system type and sometimes operating-system version; a platform-specific gem requires a matching Ruby build. Labels can also identify a runtime target: Nokogiri’s java-platform build targets JRuby. The gem’s runtime and version requirements still matter.
Rails is a separate web framework built for Ruby. Its model–view–controller (MVC) structure separates domain data and business logic in models, representations in views, and HTTP request/response handling in controllers. Models are often database-backed but need not be, and responses are not limited to HTML.
Rails’ convention over configuration supplies framework defaults rather than eliminating configuration. Its Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle seeks one authoritative representation of each piece of knowledge, not a ban on repeated syntax.
Runtime Implementations
An implementation is software that executes the Ruby Programming Language, potentially using interpretation, compilation or both.
Ruby implementation comparison
| Implementation | Language / runtime | Facilities or purpose | Integration or qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRI/CRuby | Language / runtimeWritten in C | Facilities or purposeReference implementation | Integration or qualificationAn implementation, not the language itself |
| JRuby | Language / runtimeJava Virtual Machine (JVM) | Facilities or purposeOptimizing just-in-time (JIT) compilers, garbage collectors and concurrent threads | Integration or qualificationJava libraries and tooling |
| Rubinius | Language / runtimeVirtual machine with an LLVM-based machine-code compiler | Facilities or purposeConcurrency mechanisms | Integration or qualificationProject-described mostly compatible superset |
| TruffleRuby | Language / runtimeGraalVM, a runtime environment | Facilities or purposeHigh-performance aim | Integration or qualificationArchitecture establishes no universal speed ranking |
Uses and Compatibility Considerations
Ruby supports web applications, non-web scripting and embedding in other software. In a hypothetical document-extraction task, a Ruby script could use Nokogiri to query a saved HTML document and collect article headings; Nokogiri handles HTML/XML documents, not every step of a scraping workflow.
Official version-specific reference documentation and beginner learning resources are available. Use reference documentation matching the Ruby version your runtime supports. Runtime compatibility targets vary by release, and the same Ruby library can behave differently across runtimes: Nokogiri documents parser differences between CRuby and JRuby.
