Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, dynamic, and portable. Similar in scope to Perl and Python, it has high-level data types, automatic memory management, dynamic typing, a module system, exceptions, and a rich standard library.
To help address performance issues, virtual machines for Ruby have been developed, such as JRuby and YARV, which is being integrated into the Ruby distribution.
If you’re investigating Ruby, and building webapps, you’ll want to take a close look at Rails.
You can download Ruby
Visit RubyForge to see some related projects building on or extending the capabilities of Ruby.
Read documentation
And get a 20-minute tutorial