Ruby is a multi-paradigm, dynamically typed, and strongly typed interpreted programming language with automatic memory management. Originally designed and developed in Japan in 1995 by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, Ruby was intended as a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than Python.

Ruby was conceived on February 24, 1993, by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who aimed to create a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

After the release of Ruby 1.3 in 1999, the first English-language mailing list, Ruby-Talk, began, marking growing interest in the language outside Japan.

In September 2000, the first English book, *Programming Ruby*, was printed and later released for free, which helped drive adoption of Ruby among English speakers.

Around 2005, interest in Ruby rose along with Ruby on Rails, a popular web application framework written in Ruby. Rails is often credited with making Ruby "famous," and the association between the two is so strong that newcomers sometimes confuse them.

Up to version 1.9.2-p290, Ruby was released under a dual license: Ruby License / GNU General Public License. From version 1.9.3-p0, it was released under a dual license: Ruby License / FreeBSD License (also known as the 2-clause BSDL). From version 2.1.0, the project adopted semantic versioning. Official support for version 1.9.3 ended on February 23, 2015.