If you intended the variable assignment to be Ruby code, then it is wrong. It should be
person = "John"; building = "Big Tower"
or
person, building = "John", "Big Tower"
And for the question, yes, except that interpolation is a feature of Ruby, not Rails. Please be respectful to plain Ruby and its developers, and don’t confuse it with Rails. Rails is only a framework built on top of Ruby. Rails is not the only use of Ruby.
5
solved How to use string interpolation