goal "Discuss what a programming language is"
goal "Discuss some of the characteristics of the Ruby language"
Every application on your computer was written by somebody, from the operating system to your web browser. Every program was written in some kind of programming language.
Programming languages come in all shapes and sizes. Some are optimized for the speed at which the computer will execute them, and some are optimized for the speed at which a human can program in them.
Ruby was invented in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro Matsumoto -- Matz for short. Matz' goals were to make programming faster and easier. Ruby is designed to make programmers happy.
Ruby's popularity soared with the invention of the **Ruby on Rails** web framework, but Ruby is useful for many more things than just websites.
message "[Wikipedia's article on Ruby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_\(programming_language\\))"
message 'If you know another programming language, see [Ruby From Other Languages](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/ruby-from-other-languages) for a comparison'