Rails

Ruby and Rails are not the same thing. Ruby is the programming language. Rails is a Rubygem or package library which is installed via terminal or command line. Rails is the web application framework coded using Ruby. Rails makes programming web applications easier and more fun by laying the groundwork that every developer may need to begin coding. As a result, programmers are able to write less code. However because Rails assumes what a developer needs it makes the assumption that there is a best way and discourages all others. Learning the Rails will increase productivity and includes two very important guidelines. One of these guidelines is to keep your code DRY without repeats. The other guideline is to prefer convention over configuration. In other words, code the way Rails wants you to code a web application.

Rails combines Ruby, HTML, CSS, and JS to program web applications on a web server. As a consequence, Rails is considered as a back-end or server-side web application development platform whereas the web browsers Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari are examples of front end applications. Web startups usually prefer Rails.

Why Ruby?

So you may have wondered why Ruby is used with rails. Ruby and not Java, PHP, or other programming languages is used in conjunction with Rails because of its "clean" syntax and capabilities of DRY code. Ruby is more streamlined than Java. The greatest advantage of combining Ruby with Rails is the sharing and installation of RubyGems. These gems allow developers to easily obtain the latest version of Rails to aid building complex websites.

Additional Resources on Rails:

in-depth rails

rubyonrails.org