Classes in Ruby are first-class objects and each is an instance of class Class. Each class is also a global constant and can be used in any part of a program. Class names are capitalized to differentiate themselves and to show that they are constants. Creating new classes is simple and fundamental to object oriented programming using Ruby. Example: class Name def initialize print "Creating a new instance of #{self.name}" end end Name.new #=> "Creating a new instance of Name"