This document provides an overview of Ruby on Rails, including its history, what Rails is, the MVC framework, and how to set up a development environment using RVM and Bundler. Ruby was created in the mid-1990s and Rails was developed in 2005 as an open source web application framework built with Ruby. Rails emphasizes conventions over configuration, don't repeat yourself principles, and the model-view-controller pattern. RVM and Bundler are tools that help manage Ruby versions and gem dependencies to ensure a consistent development environment.