What is Ruby?

Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented, and general-purpose programming language known for its simplicity and developer-friendly syntax. Ruby was developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the mid-1990s to fulfill the goal of making programming both productive and enjoyable. Ruby follows OOP(Object Oriented Programming) principles which help developers to modularize the code which can reuse and reduce code redundancy. Developers can take advantage of its large and active community which provides detailed resources to learn this language.

Key Features of Ruby

• Simple and Expressive Language: Ruby is well known for its simplicity, which means it is easy for beginners and experienced developers to write clean and concise code. This makes Ruby readable and often resembles the plain English language. Ruby supports expressive construction with the use of blocks and iterators that allow developers to write powerful and efficient code.
• Support of OOP Principles: Ruby is pure Object Oriented Programming language, which means everything in Ruby is Object. Developers can use OOP principles such as inheritance, Encapsulation, and Polymorphism to write efficient and reusable code.
• Support of Dynamic Type: Ruby is a dynamically typed language which means it type of variables in Ruby are determined at runtime rather than compile time. This gives developers the flexibility to write more adaptive and generic code.
• Support of Duck-Type: Ruby follows the principle of Duck typing which means the task of the object is determined by the presence of methods or behaviors not by its type. This enables developers to code reusability and flexibility.
• Metaprogramming Capability: With the metaprogramming capabilities, Ruby allows programs to manipulate their own structure and behavior at run time itself. This allows for defining methods at runtime, and opening and modifying existing classes.
• Rich Library and Ecosystem: Ruby has a large and rich library with inbuilt support for commonly performed tasks such as IO, networking, and data manipulation, this also eliminates the requirements of third-party libraries in many cases.

Advantages of Ruby

• Ruby’s large and rich ecosystem of third-party libraries and frameworks covers various domains such as Web development, DB access, and testing, this also helps developers in rapid development.
• Ruby has a strong and active community of developers who continuously contribute to resources such as forms, meetups, and conferences where developers can connect and seek help to address their issues.
• Well suitable for web development, scripting, and prototypes because of its productive and expressive syntax.

In the large landscape of programming languages when it comes to selecting programming language for projects, developers have many options to select but they face difficulties in selecting the right language, Out of many options two strong contenders are very popular and widely used languages Ruby and Rust.

Both languages have powerful tools and features but they both have distinct characteristics. Today, in this article we will have an inside look at both languages with their top differences that will ease developers to select either of them.