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Ruby was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who wished to create a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was initially developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto. It was influenced primarily by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, and Lisp.

Ruby supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object oriented, imperative and reflective. It also has a dynamic typesystem and automatic memory management; it is therefore similar in varying respects to Python, Perl, Lisp, Dylan, Pike, and CLU.

The standard 1.8.7 implementation is written in C, as a single-pass interpreted language. There is currently no specification of the Ruby language, so the original implementation is considered to be the de facto reference. As of 2010, there are a number of complete or upcoming alternative implementations of the Ruby language, including YARV, JRuby, Rubinius, IronRuby, MacRuby and HotRuby, each of which takes a different approach, with IronRuby, JRuby and MacRuby providing just-in-time compilation and MacRuby also providing ahead-of-time compilation. The official 1.9 branch uses YARV, as will 2.0 (development), and will eventually supersede the slower Ruby MRI.

Ruby Quick Reference
http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html

Ruby Annotation
http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/

Ruby in Linux Journals
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5915

Ruby Documentation: Programming Ruby
http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/

The Top 10 Reasons The Ruby Programming Language Sucks

http://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/the-top-10-reasons-the-ruby-programming-language-sucks

Ruby : The Programmers best friends
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

For Ruby Beginners
http://www.squidoo.com/ruby-programming-beginner

Ruby Programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_Programming

Ruby CookBook
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Table_of_Contents

Ruby Programming Challenge for Newbies -
http://rubylearning.com/blog/ruby-programming-challenge-faq/

Common "issues" faced by Ruby Newbies by Chris Strom -
http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/10/newbie-feedback.html

Books
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Book-Of-Ruby

Free Online Ruby Programming along with many Ruby newbies here -
http://rubylearning.org/class/