Ruby on Rails is a web application framework written in Ruby that follows conventions like Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) and convention over configuration. It provides tools like ActiveRecord for object-relational mapping and working with databases, views for creating pages, and controllers to tie the view to the model. Rails encourages best practices like test-driven development, keeping business logic in models, and using migrations to version the database schema. It aims to provide a productive environment for building web applications with minimal code.