## TL;DR

Ruby (Yukihiro Matsumoto, 1995) is a dynamic, object-oriented language optimized for developer happiness. Everything is an object, including primitives. Convention over configuration. Ruby's elegant syntax (influenced by Perl, Smalltalk) makes it popular for scripting, web (Rails), and DevOps (Chef, Puppet, Vagrant).

## Core Explanation

Ruby 3.0 (2020): 3x performance improvement (MJIT), Ractor for parallelism, fiber scheduler. Ruby 3.3 (2023): YJIT (Yet Another JIT) — significant speed improvements for Rails. Blocks: `array.each { |item| puts item }`. Mixins via modules (no multiple inheritance). Duck typing: 'if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...'.

## Further Reading

- [Ruby Documentation](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/)