Introduction

Welcome to this Ruby programming tutorial! Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.

Ruby was created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in the mid-1990s in Japan. Matz designed the language to be fun and productive, taking the best ideas from Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp.

"I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language."

Why Learn Ruby?

• Clean and elegant syntax that is easy to read and write
• Fully object-oriented - everything in Ruby is an object
• Dynamic typing and duck typing
• Powerful standard library
• Active and friendly community
• Great for web development with Ruby on Rails
• Excellent for scripting and automation

This tutorial will guide you through the fundamentals of Ruby programming, starting from installation and your first program, all the way to advanced concepts like metaprogramming and modules.