Ruby is an open source, interpreted, object-oriented programming language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who chose the gemstone’s name to suggest “a jewel of a language.” Ruby is designed to be simple, complete, extensible, and portable. Developed mostly on Linux, Ruby works across most platforms, such as most Unix-based platforms, DOS, Windows, Macintosh, BeOS, and OS/2, for example. According to proponents, Ruby’s simple syntax(partially inspired by Ada and Eiffel), makes it readable by anyone who is familiar with any modern programming language.Ruby is considered similar to Smalltalk and Perl. The authors of the book Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, David Thomas and Andrew Hunt say that it is fully object-oriented, like Smalltalk, although more conventional to use, and as convenient as Perl, but fully object-oriented, which leads to better structured and easier-to-maintain programs. To be compliant with the principles of Extreme Programming (XP), Ruby allows portions of projects to be written in other languages if they are better suited.

Ruby has become extremely popular in Japan; it is sometimes said that, at the moment, although there are a huge number of Ruby programmers, most of them don’t speak English. That situation is expected to change, however: Hunt and Thomas predict that Ruby will undergo explosive growth between 2001 and 2002, and overtake Python within four years.