# Important features of Ruby **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 1, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392 "2006-04-01T12:50:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392/1 "2006-04-01T12:50:57Z")
Dear all, I’m pretty new to Ruby and I’ve discovered that it has a number of nice ideas such as blocks and mixins. I wonder, however, what features of Ruby would the experts consider as being the most important ones? Why does Ruby gain more and more attention nowadays? Is it due to its ability to combine OO, functional and scripting ideas? Or due to rapid development of database-backed web applications with Ruby on Rails? Thanks in advance, Alexander ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392/2 "2006-04-01T16:09:51Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > Dear all, > > I’m pretty new to Ruby and I’ve discovered that it has a number of nice > ideas such as blocks and mixins. I wonder, however, what features of > Ruby would the experts consider as being the most important ones? Why > does Ruby gain more and more attention nowadays? Is it due to its > ability to combine OO, functional and scripting ideas? Or due to rapid > development of database-backed web applications with Ruby on Rails? [http://reddit.com/search?q=ruby](http://reddit.com/search?q=ruby) somewhere in there are articles by Bruce Eckel,Bruce Tate, Ian B., Martin Fowle, Sam Ruby etc about ruby vs java vs python vs lisp vs whatever ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392/3 "2006-04-01T18:06:35Z")
Thank you for the link! ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392/4 "2006-04-02T00:05:14Z")
Full closures in a language that can actually get things done and a syntax that makes them useful. The ability to pass little blocks of code around that do what you expect (i.e., have the scope you expect) is powerful but not terribly uncommon. Having a syntax and standard library that makes using them both natural and convenient is very special. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 11:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/important-features-of-ruby/93392/5 "2006-04-01T23:19:34Z")
On 4/1/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Dear all, You will get probaly 2\*\*n different opinions, n being the number of replies 😉 I was stuck by two things - Very concise OO syntax (and semantics too). - Ruby does what you expect it to do. This is an interesting one though as it seems to go away a little bit when we come to the subtilities, but that cannot be helped, I am afraid. Cheers Robert – Deux choses sont infinies : l’univers et la bêtise humaine ; en ce qui concerne l’univers, je n’en ai pas acquis la certitude absolue. - Albert Einstein