# Whats the rail?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 26, 2006, 5:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325 "2006-03-26T17:46:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rpheath)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 5:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325/1 "2006-03-26T17:46:09Z")

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I am an extreme beginer to ruby on rails, but not to PHP, Java … etc  
and  
other OO-like languages. So I have a good understanding of the  
principles,  
just new to Ruby.

I have two simple questions here:

1.) I get that Ruby is the language but what is the “Rails” part about?

2.) I get the Ruby Gems is the package manager but package manager for  
what?  
Language Extensions?

-Thanks

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**Author:** ![rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rpheath)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 6:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325/2 "2006-03-26T18:09:06Z")

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1. rails is a framework, ie a library, code that someone wrote in ruby.

A rails application is going to be a mix of ruby code to program what  
is going on on the server  
side and and rails framework set up

1. [http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/1#page22](http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/1#page22)

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**Author:** ![rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rpheath)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325/3 "2006-03-26T22:57:36Z")

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On Mar 26, 2006, at 11:08 AM, anne001 wrote:

> 1. rails is a framework, ie a library, code that someone wrote in  
> ruby.

Just to quibble over framework vs. library. In general you call out  
to library code, whereas a framework tends to call your code.

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**Author:** ![rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rpheath](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rpheath)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 11:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-rail/87325/4 "2006-03-26T23:06:09Z")

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On 3/26/06, Ryan and Kate H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I am an extreme beginer to ruby on rails, but not to PHP, Java … etc and  
> other OO-like languages. So I have a good understanding of the principles,  
> just new to Ruby.
> 
> I have two simple questions here:
> 
> 1.) I get that Ruby is the language but what is the “Rails” part about?

> **[Ruby on Rails](https://rubyonrails.org)**
>
> A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

(somebody had to do it.)