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Ruby is a general purpose, object-oriented programming language (OOP) that was developed in the 1990s by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto.

OOP is a programming concept where everything is treated as an object. These objects inherit their characteristics from classes. Think of classes as the blueprints and objects as the house built from those blueprints. The blueprints outline the structure and characteristics. Using those blueprints, you can build as many houses as you need.

Because objects inherit their characteristics and behavior from the classes that spawn them, they can be created and discarded as needed. They also can interact with each other, store data and perform functions.

Ruby takes the concepts of OOP and applies them to a greater extent than many other languages. Everything, even snippets of data, can be treated as an object with methods and variables.

Mr. Matsumoto designed Ruby after being disappointed with other programming languages available at the time. He designed Ruby to be natural in a way that mimics life, simple on the outside and complex inside. This gives Ruby a flexibility that makes it popular with programmers. In particular, Ruby is designed to give the programmer freedom to remove or redefine parts of Ruby as needed. Even essential parts of Ruby can be modified.

Ruby is completely free and open source.

Ruby is used in a wide range of applications. NASA uses it to conduct simulations, Lucent uses it in 3G wireless telephony and Google SketchUp uses it for its macro scripting API. Basecamp, by 37signals, is written entirely in Ruby.

Yes, Ruby is a popular choice for developing web applications.

Yes, Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an open source web application framework that enables Ruby to be a powerful web development language. RoR includes a number of principles designed to allow rapid development. One of these is Convention over Configuration (CoC), which means that only unconventional aspects of the application need be specified. RoR also incorporates the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) philosophy, designed to reduce information redundancy in the code.

Ruby consistently ranks in Top 10 lists of best languages to learn, or most popular languages in use. This is largely due to its versatility, flexibility, and powerful features. Add in RoR, and Ruby becomes an incredibly powerful language for rapidly building and deploying web applications, making Ruby programmers in high demand.

Given its ongoing popularity, its widespread uses, its open source nature and its relative simplicity, Ruby is an excellent choice of language to learn.

Ruby, as a programming language, is used to create a number of high-profile applications, including mission-critical applications that require a high degree of stability. At the same time, however, RoR sometimes receives criticism for advancing at such a rapid rate that stability is sacrificed. For most developers, keeping with the latest stable releases is enough to ensure maximum stability.

PHP and Python are two languages that most directly compete with Ruby. Both of them are general-purpose programming languages that are widely used for web development.

As with many things, there is no clear-cut right or wrong answer. In many ways, Python and Ruby are very similar and there is a great deal of overlaps in their uses. In spite of that, there are things that each one is slightly better for. Python, for example, may be a better choice for general programming or creating scripts for use on your local computer. Ruby, in contrast, may be a better choice for web application development, especially in combination with RoR.

Ruby and PHP more directly compete with one another, since both are used so heavily in web development. In spite of that, each one does have advantages in different areas. PHP is an extremely simple language to learn and deploy and enjoys an almost ubiquitous presence on web hosting servers. There are, however, some complaints about the quality of PHP code. Because PHP evolved and changed over the years, adding features and abilities that were not anticipated at the outset, this sometimes led to bad code or inferior ways of implementing features. Ruby, on the other hand, was designed from the ground up to address the kind of shortcomings that other languages suffered, making it a very progressive, forward-thinking programming language. Add in the RoR framework and Ruby is easily one of the most robust languages for web development.

Because Ruby is free and open source, Ruby is widely supported on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. There are a number of frameworks available for the various platforms to assist in the creation of native applications using Ruby. Since the majority of the Internet’s web servers run Linux, it is a simple matter to support it. Even so, not all hosting plans support it by default, but it should be fairly easy to install it, especially on VPS plans and dedicated servers.