Ruby on Rails, also known as RoR, is a Web application framework. Ruby and Rails are in fact two different aspects – Ruby is a general programming language while Rails is an open source application framework. When someone says Ruby on Rails, he or she is referring to the Rails framework. Ruby on Rails is on the way to become the most popular Web application framework. With Ruby on Rails, developers can create application ten times faster than Java or PHP. Let’s try to learn about Ruby and rails in detail.
Ruby- the programming language : Ruby is a general programming language that brings in different programming approaches together. It has an easy-to-understand flow, a characteristic of Python language, the elegance of Smalltalk, and the easy syntax style of Perl. Ruby is an object-oriented language. It is popular for its automatic memory management and dynamic type system. When you are working with Ruby, you need not worry about data types (integer or strings) as the programming language takes care of it. Yukihiro Matsumoto, the author of Ruby programming language, developed Ruby for improving programmer’s productivity.Therefore, Ruby program code is easy to understand. The simple code structure encourages programmers to experiment and be creative with their development work.
Gems, also known as RubyGems, are standard software packages containing libraries. They have the ability to modify or extend the functionality of Ruby applications. RubyGems also provide some command-line utilities that speed up the development work.You can find several RubyGems that have been developed and published by RoR programmers. Gems developed by other Ruby programmers can be used to address specific problems or functionalities in your RoR applications.
Rails – the application framework : Rails is a Web application framework written in the Ruby language. The Rails framework creates three different environments for your project. One of the environments is exclusively dedicated to application testing. The framework follows Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which leads to structured code and simplifies collaboration. Rails provides developers with every tool needed to create a database backed-up application. It simplifies the Web application development tasks through assumptions. In Rails, a developer is able to do more things with less code as the framework strongly supports reuse of the code. Rails has several built-in scripts, known as generators. These generators make the application development work easy by creating the basic code required to start application development work. Rails is a full stack framework, which means that it provides you with back-end, front-end, and a Web Server to run and test your applications. Since the Rails framework is explicitly written in Ruby language, it offers built-in support for Ruby programming fundamentals – do not Repeat Yourself and Convention over Configuration.
As individual components, Ruby and Rails complement each other in the best possible manner.Application development is currently expensive and dominated by limited platforms. Ruby on Rails, an open source framework, is likely to change this by making Web application development more economical and faster. The Ruby and Rails is bound to become developers’ favorite as it makes the application development work easy and fun. The Ruby and Rails community is growing at a very fast rate, which means you have the best support available whenever you are in need of it.