Ruby: console.log?

I recently put console.log statements in every line of a JavaScript program and found that it's now much easier to understand. Is there a way to do that with server side code, specifically Ruby? I presume there's no way to read it in firebug, but would it be visible in irb? what console.log equivalent statements would I put in the Ruby code?

puts is the equivalent in ruby.

Example

puts 'Hello World!'

If you are running your server in the console, you can use puts. Otherwise, you will need to write to a file, possibly via a logger (like Rails.logger.info).