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There are advantages and disadvantages to being an interpreted language. A disadvantage is speed. Because the source code has to be interpreted at runtime this means that it runs slower than an equivalent compiled application. A secondary concern for some is the fact that anyone who uses your application will also be able to see the source code. In the world of open source this is less of a problem than it used to be, but for some proprietary applications this might prove to be unacceptable.
The primary advantage of interpreted languages is that they are portable across multiple operating system platforms and hardware architectures. A compiled application, on the other hand, will only run on the operating system and hardware for which it was compiled. You For example, you can take a Ruby application and run it without modification on an Intel system running Linux, an Intel system running Windows, an Intel system running MacOS Mac OS X or even a PowerPC system running MacOS Mac OS or Linux. To do this with a C or C++ application you would need to compile the code on each of the 5 different systems and make each binary image available. With Ruby you just supply the source code.
Another advantage of being interpreted is that we can write and execute Ruby code in real-time directly in the Ruby interpreter. For those who like to try things out in real time (and not everyone does), this is an invaluable feature.
Not only is Ruby intuitive and flexible it is also extensible, enabling new functionality to be added through the integration third-party, or even home grown libraries.
And, of course, being an interpreted language means that Ruby is portable. Once an application has been developed in Ruby it will run equally well on Ruby supported platforms such as Linux, UNIX, Windows and MacOS Mac OS X.
