The Ruby programming language

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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. From the Ruby web site at https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ .

Note: Ruby is an interpreted general purpose programming language.

For installation details, see Ruby .

Here is the Ruby code.

printf "Hello world\n"

Here is the output of the Ruby code.

Hello world

Here is the Ruby code.

def toBinary1(x1)
	s2 = ""
	if x1 == 0
		s2 = "0"
	else
		while x1 != 0
			r1 = x1 % 2
			x1 = x1 / 2
			s2 = r1.to_s + s2
			end
		end
	return s2
	end
x1 = 156
s1 = toBinary1(x1)
printf "Value %dd in binary is %sb.\n",x1,s1
printf "\n"
for i1 in 0 .. 16 do
	s1 = toBinary1(i1)
	printf "%dd == %sb\n",i1,s1
	end

Here is the output of the Ruby code.

Value 156d in binary is 10011100b.

0d == 0b
1d == 1b
2d == 10b
3d == 11b
4d == 100b
5d == 101b
6d == 110b
7d == 111b
8d == 1000b
9d == 1001b
10d == 1010b
11d == 1011b
12d == 1100b
13d == 1101b
14d == 1110b
15d == 1111b
16d == 10000b

Ruby was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz) in Japan in the mid 1990s.

Ruby is said to follow the principle of least astonishment (POLA), meaning that the language should behave in such a way as to minimize confusion for experienced users. (Wikipedia)

Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run fast. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves. Yukihiro Matsumoto

Ruby is an interpreted language.

Simple explanation: (using tree processing as covered in class)

Interpreted: Parsed to a syntax tree, executed by doing computations while traversing the tree.
Compiled: Parsed to a syntax tree, traverse the tree to generate postfix code, execute the postfix code to do computations.

Note: A JIT (Just In Time) compiler parses the code and, as needed, just in time, converts it to code (e.g., postfix code) to be executed.

Ruby is dynamically typed.

Garbage collection is used to recover unused objects, etc.

Ruby has a command interpreter called irb (interactive Ruby) for quickly testing small amounts of Ruby code.