About 3 years back, a search on the Internet for 'Ruby' would have shown you links about the gemstone, but today you won't find a link to a website dealing with precious stones in the first few pages of the search results. So what is this new 'Ruby' all about?

Introduction

Ruby is a programming language created by Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto, released in 1995. Its birth had its origins in certain values and principles that were held dear by its creator. The most important of these are "Programming should be fun" and "Focus on humans, not machines."

Matz describes his language as, "Ruby is an interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It may seem a little strange at first, but it is designed to be easily read and written."

More formally, Ruby is an interpreted, reflective, object-oriented, open-source, and general-purpose programming language. It is developed from various languages such as Smalltalk, Perl, Python, Lisp, and Ada.
So, why is Ruby catching attention? Some reasons are:

* Word of mouth: Ruby is the most talked about programming language in the tech circles.
* It is easy to start learning Ruby.
* It is fun and powerful.
* Ruby has easy portability as interpreters are available for most platforms. * And most important of all, Ruby on Rails is a quick and viable Ruby-based alternative to existing Web frameworks.

Let's delve further into what makes Ruby special, bringing it out of the hobbyists' realms into real world projects.

Ruby Principles

Personally I feel Ruby changes the way you think about programming. It brings to the forefront ideas that were realized sometime back but have become popular only now. As Kent Beck says, "I always thought Smalltalk would beat Java, I just didn't know it would be called 'Ruby' when it did." Ward Cunningham adds, "For me, Ruby is the successful combination of Smalltalk's conceptual elegance, Python’s ease of use and learning, and Perl’s pragmatism."

Programming Should be Fun

Matz believes choosing a programming language should be about how you feel while programming in it. He says, "Programmers often feel joy when they can concentrate on the creative side of programming, so Ruby is designed to make programmers happy." This is aided by features like concise syntax, powerful regular expressions, closures, and so on.

Focus on Humans, not Machines

"Often people focus on the machines, as they think, by doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively," Matz says. He continues, "But in fact we need to focus on humans. We are the masters. They are the slaves." Ruby allows for this by being portable, doing behind-the-scenes optimization, and by remaining free from machine limitations.

The simplest example is of how a language deals with numbers. In most languages numbers are explicitly tied to a datatype which has a minimum and a maximum value depending on occupied bytes. In Ruby, programmers can treat a number like a number, without worrying about datatypes and their bounds: Ruby transparently manages datatypes for numbers. For example, 1 is Fixnum but 9999999999 is Bignum.

Code that is Easy to Read and Write

Ruby lends itself to communicative syntax. It almost reads like English, making it a good choice for implementing internal Domain Specific Languages (languages targeted at specific problem domains, usually specifying what to do rather than how to do). Example: if door.is_closed? 4.times { door.knock } until door.is_open? unless door.leads_to_hell_man! end.

Principle of Flexibility

Matz says, "Because languages are meant to express thought, a language should not restrict human thought, but should help it. Ruby consists of an unchangeable small core (that is, syntax) and arbitrarily extensible class libraries." You can treat built-in classes like user defined classes and extend them as and when required.

Ruby Features

Strong OO Everything is an object in Ruby! This includes what are usually primitive datatypes in other languages (like int, char, etc in Java or C++). Ruby pushes object orientation to its limits, respecting objects more than classes. This is evident from concepts like singleton methods (methods defined on an object instance rather than its class), private members being inaccessible to other instances of the same class and duck-typing.

Duck-typing

"If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it is a duck" – that's Duck-typing. In other words, any object, irrespective of its class, can be used without problem in places where certain methods are invoked on it as long as it responds to those methods. There are no class-based restrictions. Example: class MyDuck def quack(); puts "Quack!"; end end class YourDuck def quack(); puts "Quack quack!"; end end def make_it_quack(duck) duck.quack end make_it_quack(MyDuck.new) # => Quack! make_it_quack(YourDuck.new) # => Quack quack!

Messages, not Function Calls

In Ruby, method calls on an object are treated as messages sent to the object, not function table lookups. So if a method is called on an object that doesn't have that method defined, it is not an error but simply a message sent to an object that doesn't know how to deal with it; in such a case, Ruby redirects the message to method missing(), a method defined in the Object class to raise a NoMethodError.

Overriding this method proves very helpful when designing proxies, filters and mock objects.

Example: class Proxy def initialize(); @objects = Array.new; end def add(obj); @objects << obj; end def method_missing(method, *args, &block) @objects.each do |obj| # loop over @objects array if obj.methods.include?(method.to_s) return obj.send(method, *args, &block) # pass on the method invocation to obj end end raise NoMethodError, “No object in proxy for message ‘#{method.to_s}’” end end class HelloWorld def hello(); puts “hello world”; end end proxy = Proxy.new proxy.add(“AMAN”) proxy.add(HelloWorld.new) puts proxy.downcase # => aman proxy.hello # => hello world puts proxy.bye # => NoMethodError

Closures

A block of code can be passed on as an argument like any other object (this is 'closure'). These blocks are evaluated, however, in the context of the calling scope. This helps implement behavior that uses different objects' data without breaking encapsulation, and also helps distribute responsibilities properly (for example, how-to-loop logic in a collection class and processing logic in a domain class).
Example: class OddEvenArray def initialize(contents); @contents = contents; end def for_every(position_type, &block) index = (position_type == :even) ? 0 : 1 while(index < @contents.length) block.call(@contents[index]) index+=2 end end end players = ["Ram", "John", "Aamir", "Vivek"] even_numbered_tshirts = [ ] OddEvenArray.new(players).for_every(:even) { |even_player| even_numbered_tshirts << even_player } # the block above (within { }) refers local variable 'even_numbered_tshirts' but gets executed by # OddEvenArray instance’s for_every() method, which provides 'even_player' value one at a time puts even_numbered_tshirts # => "Ram", "Aamir"

Meta-programming

Ruby enables meta-programming (programs that modify programs) in various ways. Examples: Open classes (redefining an already loaded class’ behaviour at runtime) 4.factorial # => NoMethodError, ie, 'factorial' isn't defined yet on 4's class: Fixnum class Fixnum def factorial() res = 1 counter = self while(counter >= 1); res *= counter; counter -= 1; end res # returning res; in Ruby, return is implied for a method’s last statement end end 4.factorial # => 24 Eval methods (methods that every class has, to evaluate code against its context) class Object def self.define_getters(fields) # defines class-level method on Object fields.each { |field| class_eval("def get_#{field}; @#{field}; end") } # dynamically adds instance methods end end class Person define_getters ["name", "age"] def initialize(name, age) ;@name, @age = name, age ;end end Person.new("Aman", 25).get_name # => “Aman”

Mixins

Mixins help avoid code duplication without tangly class hierarchies. Related behavior can be grouped into Modules that can be included in different classes. module Flyer def fly(); puts "#{@name} is flying"; end end module Swimmer def swim(); puts "#{@name} is swimmin"; end end class Duck def initialize(); @name = "Duck" end include Flyer include Swimmer end class Crow def initialize(); @name = "Crow"; end include Flyer end duck = Duck.new duck.fly # => Duck is flying duck.swim # => Duck is swimming Crow.new.fly # => Crow is flying

Conclusion

There are many more features of Ruby that you can discover as you learn, amazing stuff that make 'magical' frameworks like Rails possible. Hope, this quick introduction has succeeded in piquing your interest. Dynamic languages are an exciting new world, especially for people coming from static languages. For more, visit http://www.ruby-lang.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_ (programming_language)