What is ruby used for...

[matsko]

I have 100% ignorant to the features and uses for the Ruby scripting language.

Is it another server scripting lanuage meant to interpret html pages...

or is it meant for internal server jobs?

[bonefry]

It is a general purpose scripting language, that also has Ruby on Rails which is a very good framework for developing web applications.

The target of Ruby is very similar to that of Python.

[xmitchx]

Bonefry basically got it right. Most importantly: general purpose.

Ruby was not made from the ground up for the web, it was made for anything and everything. Rails was developed on top of ruby to provide a quick and easy way to create web applications (and it was released into 1.0 today!). But there are other libraries to create GUI applications for windows and mac alike. There are literally thousands upon thousands of libraries out there.

[Fenrir2]

And it can be used to create domain-specific-languages, Rake for example.

[MiiJaySung]

And it can be used to create domain-specific-languages, Rake for example.

Again to extend on that point, rails has a lot of of this through the use of associations etc.

This feature of Ruby makes it so attrictive over things like PHP and Java for web programming as it's more expressive. PHP and Java have a tendancy to look a bit cyyptic like C/C++.