Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto and originally released in 1995. Ruby's design goal is "humanization", that is, to make programming easier, natural and readable. Ruby's development process can be divided into the following stages.
1. The origin of Ruby
The original version of Ruby was released on February 24, 1995. Ruby at the time was just a very simple, class-based programming language that was influenced by languages like Perl, Lisp, Smalltalk, and others. Ruby's original goal was to provide Japanese developers with an easy-to-learn and use programming language to meet the growing needs of Internet applications.
2. Ruby development
Over time, Ruby evolved into a powerful, easy-to-use programming language. In the version released in 1997, Ruby increased the block (block) concept, which makes programming easier and more flexible. In the Ruby 1.6 version released in 2000, the performance of Ruby has been greatly improved, and the concept of exception handling mechanism and module (module) has been added at the same time, making Ruby code more modular and easy to reuse.
In 2003, Ruby version 1.8 was released. This release introduces the RubyGems package management system, making Ruby extensions and libraries easier to manage. In addition, Ruby 1.8 also added support for regular expressions and a unit testing framework.
3. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (RoR for short) is a Web development framework based on the Ruby language. Its appearance has completely changed the way of Web development. Ruby on Rails adopts the "convention over configuration" development method, so that developers can focus more on the realization of business logic, rather than configuration and management of the underlying technical details.
The emergence of Ruby on Rails also makes the Ruby language widely concerned and applied. Many well-known websites, such as GitHub, Basecamp, Shopify, etc., are developed based on Ruby on Rails.
4. Ruby 2.0
Ruby 2.0 is a major release of the Ruby language. It was released in 2013, introducing a host of new features and performance optimizations. Among them, Ruby 2.0 increases the support of keyword parameters, introduces the Refinements mechanism, and adds the Fiber class, etc. At the same time, Ruby 2.0 also optimizes the memory management and garbage collection mechanism, improving the performance and stability of Ruby.
5. Ruby 3.0
Ruby 3.0 is the latest version of the Ruby language, released in December 2020. Ruby 3.0 introduces a host of new features and performance optimizations. Among them, Ruby 3.0 has added a multi-threaded parallel execution mechanism, introduced a Ractor mechanism, and added Pattern Matching, etc. Ruby 3.0 also optimizes the execution efficiency and improves the performance of Ruby.
In short, the development of the Ruby language can be said to be mature and perfect step by step. From the initial simplicity and ease of use to the feature-rich and performance-optimized Ruby 3.0 version, the Ruby language has been constantly evolving and developing, providing developers with a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use programming language.