From the distribution README:

* What's Ruby

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and
easy object-oriented programming.  It has many features to
process text files and to do system management tasks (as in
Perl).  It is simple, straight-forward, and extensible.

* Features of Ruby

  + Simple Syntax
  + *Normal* Object-Oriented features(ex. class, method calls)
  + *Advanced* Object-Oriented features(ex. Mix-in, Singleton-method)
  + Operator Overloading
  + Exception Handling
  + Iterators and Closures
  + Garbage Collection
  + Dynamic Loading of Object files(on some architecture)
  + Highly Portable(works on many UNIX machines)