Ruby: A Programmer’s Best Friend Indeed!

There are 700 programming languages in the world!!!That list doesn’t include BASIC dialects nor esoteric programming languages(programming languages designed to test the boundaries of a computer language design,as a proof of concept,a software art or as a joke!)

So why Ruby?

Because it’s simple,direct and can be learned in 20 minutes!No really!

Ruby was developed way back in 1994 by Yukihiro Matsumoto taking inspiration from various languages like Smalltalk,Eiffel,Ada and Lisp.It mirrors multiple programming structures i.e. object oriented,functional and imperative among others.It has a dynamic system and supports automatic memory management.

Ruby can be a good choice when you’re just starting to code.

Lets look at an example:

If you take  an example of a program of printing “Hello World”;

In C:

#include<stdio.h>

main()

{

printf(“Hello World”);

}

In Ruby:

print “Hello World”

You dont need to know a couple of complex functions to write a simple program.When you’re just starting to code a high level programming language like Ruby is a great way to start

Ruby is a stepping stone to implementing on Rails framework to develop web applications.Rails is a framework for creating web applications.Learning Ruby is a prerequisite to learning Ruby on Rails. You’ll be one step closer to creating web applications like Twitter, Yellow Pages, Hulu, or Groupon.

Ruby has a large and useful ecosystem:

•  It has existing code(Ruby on Rails,chef) you can use for implementations when needed. Ruby even has its own system to manage frameworks and libraries, called RubyGems. There are currently over 60,000 libraries to choose from!
• It has a huge documentation.Documentation is the first thing you turn to when you need to learn things like connecting to a database etc.
• There are a large number of learning resources to choose from.
• Stuck on a piece of code? Need instant help? Theres the Ruby Community! There are hundreds of people to help you out!

As you can see Ruby is a great language to start with or if you’re looking for a change!

HAPPY CODING!

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