The Early years
Ruby when it was developed was not much of a hit for it was just another programming language out on the streets. Rails comes along with it’s simple programming conventions that eliminated the need for verbose XML configuration files. Knowing what the code does and how the running database is to work makes it better for no large programs to debug, and problematic configuration support files to create. Rails by the way, is also open sourced but there is a very muddled licensing need so check out the various Ruby on rails sites for further information.