Why Ruby?
By Rob Stevenson (Lead Developer at Janova)
So, why choose Ruby over all of the other programming languages? For one, Ruby has been around for quite some time with a release to the on December 21st, 1995. In fact, Ruby was released to the public the same year as the first public release of the Java programming language. Unlike Java, Ruby was a grassroots effort by its creator and released as Open Source never being owned by a corporation. Adoption of the Ruby language has slowly increased over time along with its community and compared to other languages, Ruby's community is one of the most active and productive of any programming language. Additionally, Ruby allows its users to access libraries, tools and more importantly, Web Application Frameworks.
Ruby was designed by its creator to be a "language for the programmer first, computer second". It is not uncommon to hear the term "beautiful code" when talking to any number of Ruby programmers. It is this quality of Ruby that makes Ruby programmers more productive. Code quality through testing is also a pillar of the Ruby community that benefits Ruby programmers with tools, community knowledge and peer encouragement to better the code they write and to help make programs written in Ruby more stable.
Another benefit of using Ruby is Ruby on Rails, an open-source web framework. Ruby on Rails completely redefines the way modern web applications are structured and tested. In addition to having the best web application platform, it has the best toolset and user community. Rails allowed a company like Janova to go from a "what if?" whiteboard discussion, to a fully operational Testing Tool for its customers in record time.
