Ruby Internals

Here's an interesting article about how Ruby (the programming language not the gem) is interpretted or compiled. (It's funny to contemplate what that question might mean to someone who thinks we are talking about a gem and not a programming language. 'Is Ruby Interpretted or Compiled' ? Say what??)

Anyway, to whoever is left reading this, I thought this article was quite interesting: Is Ruby interpreted or compiled? - Pat Shaughnessy. Here's a quote to give you a taste:

"Ever since I started to work with Ruby in 2008, I?ve always assumed that it was an interpreted language like PHP or Javascript ? in other words, that Ruby read in, parsed and executed my code all at runtime, at the moment my program was run. This seemed especially obvious since the default and most popular implementation of Ruby is called ?MRI,? short for ?Matz?s Ruby Interpreter.? I always thought it was necessary to use an interpreter to make all of the dynamic features of the language possible." (from Is Ruby interpreted or compiled? - Pat Shaughnessy)