What is Ruby On Rails?

Ruby on Rails is a method to develop web applications. It is the super productive new method that everyone is raving about because it is practically ten times faster to create new web applications with Ruby on Rails as it is with other frameworks. However, to understand what Ruby on Rails is, you first need to understand what Ruby is and what Rails is (yes, they are two separate things).

Understanding Ruby

Ruby is a programming language, much like PHP, Python, or Perl. However, users of Ruby believe that this programming language has a more sophisticated and powerful syntax than other programming languages. The Ruby language seems to combine the best of all the other languages. For instance, it has Python’s ease of usability, the simplicity which Perl is famous for, and also has the conceptual elegance that Smalltalk is popular for. The Ruby language first originated in the early 1990s but has become extremely popular with programmers all over the world only in the last few years.

Understanding Rails

Rails is an open source web application framework that has been written using the Ruby programming language, which is why it is also known as Ruby on Rails. A framework for any program is the reusable components and code that can be used throughout the main application; basically a kind of support structure for any program. While there are many other frameworks available to programmers today, the Rails framework is becoming very popular for various reasons.

By using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is possible to develop a web application in as less as 1/10^th the time it would take you to develop the same application using a regular Java framework. This is mainly due to the Ruby language used in writing the framework. Other languages do not even allow you to do various things that are extremely easy and simple to do using the Ruby language. And since Rails is written in Ruby, it takes complete advantage of its features. Another reason why Ruby on Rails is much simpler and faster to use than other frameworks is because of its two main guiding principles, which are as under:

Less software: This means you need to use much fewer lines of code to create your web application. Less code to be written decreases the time taken to develop the application. Also, the less the code, the easier it is to understand, learn, and maintain.

Convention over configuration: There are no long-winded XML configuration files in Rails. In its place, there are a few easy programming conventions built into Rails that enable Rails to figure out all that it needs through a process of reflection and discovery. So basically, whatever Rails needs to know it automatically discovers that from your web application code and your running database; thus leaving you to practically do nothing!

Thus, to sum it up – Ruby on Rails is a framework used to create web applications that has been written using the Ruby programming language.