Technology evolves rapidly and that’s why every techie ponders if the technologies they were using would be outdated or not. Ruby is a high-level programming language. It was first developed and designed in the 1990s. Its first release was reported in 1995 and two years later it was published on the web. It was aimed at an improved UI Design. Ruby was a general-purpose language first built with two objectives of productivity and fun. Although Ruby has been around for more than 15 years, there are still coders who support it. It is among the 10 top programming languages. For this reason, Rails has brought a new update for its community, with more than 4,000 contributors on GitHub. To support its community, Ruby released a new version recently. Introduction To Ruby 3.0 is the new version that was introduced at the end of the year 2020.
Let’s explain the variations of Ruby.
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Ruby vs. Ruby on Rails
There are subtle differences between Ruby and Ruby on Rails, which can be the source of misunderstandings among people about them. To better understand the differences of various versions of Ruby technology, we should first differentiate Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
While Ruby is an open-source object-oriented language, Ruby on Rails, or simply referred to as Rails is a web application written in Ruby. Being an open-source language means it is available for free copying, modification, and use. Being object-oriented means
It is based on MVC, an architecture that separates applications into model, view, and controller components. This would separate data and user interface.
Ruby is a powerful programming language, acknowledged for its flexibility, user-friendliness, and compliance. Though, if it was not for Rails, many of us wouldn’t know the advantages of Ruby.
The other difference between these two versions is that Ruby enables dynamic typing, which refers to the ability to have variables with dynamic types.
A dynamic-typing-related feature is called duck typing which is enabled on Ruby. Ruby does not consider the class of objects and is more concerned with the method of calling on it and the operations enabled on it. To put it simply, you don’t need to check object class with the duck typing feature. We cannot say that there is a preference towards duck typing compared to static typing, they are just different.
Ruby enables small, yet powerful coding. It gives developers the ease of building custom applications, as it customizes software automatically.
Rails is a simple, mature, pragmatic, secure, and cost-effective technology supported by a community available for aid at any time. It is a highly scalable programming language, capable of being scaled to process a large number of requests per second.
A principle followed in Rails is the “DRY” or “don’t repeat yourself” principle. It refers to a software development principle in which redundancy is avoided through pattern repetition reduction.
Rails is also a good choice for developing Saas and MVP due to its fast coding and business-related problem-solving potentials. Moreover, Ruby codes can run on different devices, and thus it has cross-platform versatility.
Thus, Ruby is not only relevant in 2021, it is also a robust programming language with lots of benefits.
Applications Developed With Ruby
You may be interested in cloning the functionality of social media with Ruby, after studying the functions as well as the history of social media networks. It is an interesting idea to be able to develop a social network.
So, if you are asking yourself whether it is possible to develop one. The short answer is yes. Ruby enables you to develop a social network among its many other uses.
Twitter, Groupon, Hulu, Github, and many other platforms are among the ones developed with Ruby.
Applications Developed With Ruby on Rails
Many popular web applications are developed with Rails. Here are some examples of the top sites developed with Rails:
Basecamp project management tool was first developed in 2004 and is based on RoR; Ruby on Rails.
Another RoR developed famous web application is Airbnb that provides traveling solutions for travelers in over 65 thousand locations.
Dribble is another community network built with Rails. It has 12 million users and designers that share their creative works on the network.
These are just a few robust web applications developed based on RoR and have a large number of users to serve.
Notable Improvements in Ruby 3.0
Now that we know Ruby is not going anywhere soon, we can check its recent update, as “Ruby 3.0”.
To name the most important improvements in Ruby 3, becoming faster, more concurrent, and ensuring correctness are the top features. Generally, the qualities that have been improved in Ruby 3 compared to Ruby 2 include:
Speed
Ruby 3.0 JIT has scored 3 times faster than Ruby 2 in the Optcarrot benchmark. JIT stands for just-in-time compilation scheme which enables the compilation of code during its execution. The Ruby MJIT compiler used in the 2.6 Ruby version has been optimized to provide better security, as well as performance.
Performance
The performance of Ruby 3.0 is also more optimized for limited workloads in MJIT. It means that it works best for applications that require calling a few methods, several times.
Ruby 3 increased performance 3 times higher than its predecessors. Although the performance is enhanced in Ruby 3.0, there is still room for improvements in the 3.1 version.
Memory
There are some memory utilization improvements in Ruby 3.0 thanks to the garbage collector and Python’s buffer API. Garbage collecting facilitates program memory usage management and Ruby started improving this algorithm since its 1.8 version.
Ruby 3 automated garbage compaction which was first developed as a manual method in Ruby 2.7.
Concurrency
Concurrency refers to programming in which more than one operation runs in overlapping periods of time. The concurrency has also been upgraded in Ruby 3.
The features improved in this version include fibers and guilds. Fibers benefit from the ability to use less memory than threads. It results in improving I/O and eventually enhance concurrency in the latest Ruby version.
Typing
With RBS definitions enable type checkers better understand Ruby 3.0. RBS is mainly developed by the Ruby team to describe the Ruby programs. RBS files are stored separately from Ruby codes, in .rbs format.
Summary
Ruby and Ruby on Rails are both useful programming languages needed for many projects and thus are not dying. Ruby, being a reliable and practical language, remains in 2021. They were used to build many well-known web apps such as Twitter, Airbnb, Dribble, Groupon, Hulu, etc.
Ruby on Rails would also remain as a choice for fast coding and efficient solution for mobile and web platforms.
Ruby 3.0, the new upgrade introduced by the Ruby team, has great advancements compared to the previous versions. Better performance, concurrency, speed, and memory management are among the improvements of this version.
Trusting Ruby 3 as a programming language is much easier now, as it has been trusted by many popular platforms, and has major updates.
The good news is that Ruby 3 supports and is compatible with its previous versions. This means that the projects written with the older Ruby codes do not require to be written from scratch all over again.
