The Rails framework assist programmers to build websites and apps by abstracting and simplifying most of the repetitive tasks. Ruby is the programming language which is used alongside Rails. Ruby is to Rails as PHP is to Symfony and Zend, or as Python is to Django

The Rails way of Web development unshackled devs from the tedious parts of coding, freeing them up to focus on the business features and logic of the app. It also increased productivity and helped developers deliver MVPs and startup apps much faster.

It is used in a wide range of fields, but is best known as a language for Web Applications, because of the Ruby on Rails framework. The general purpose nature of Ruby makes it suitable for a wide array of programming tasks, just like Perl, Python and other general purpose languages.