The document provides an overview of the Ruby programming language for Perl programmers. Some key points: - Ruby is an object-oriented scripting language that is interpreted, not compiled. It draws influences from Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp, and C. - Ruby supports functional, aspect-oriented, and design-by-contract programming paradigms. It is well-suited for practices like extreme programming. - Core concepts include classes, modules, blocks/iterators, exceptions, regular expressions and strings. Common data structures include arrays, hashes, ranges and more. - Examples demonstrate basic syntax like variables, loops, conditions, classes and modules. Ruby emphasizes flexibility, dynamism and "