Yukihiro Matsumoto: The Creator of Ruby and His Impact on Programming

Yukihiro Matsumoto is a computer scientist and software developer, the creator of the Ruby programming language, and one of the most influential programmers in modern computing.

Yukihiro Matsumoto was born in Osaka, Japan. He started programming while still in junior high school. Later, he studied computer science at the University of Tsukuba, one of Japan’s leading universities in information technology at the time. During his studies, Matsumoto, who is a Christian, was involved in missionary work. This helped him become fluent in English and played an important role in building the international Ruby community and spreading the language beyond Japan.

In 1993, Matsumoto began developing Ruby, and in December 1995, he published the first version of the language.

During his long career, Yukihiro Matsumoto has worked at several companies. He was the chief Ruby architect at Heroku and also worked at Netlab Japan, where the development of Ruby originally began.

Today, Yukihiro Matsumoto serves as the chairman of the Ruby Association, the organization responsible for supporting and developing Ruby.

Despite his achievements and his well-earned place in the history of computing, Yukihiro Matsumoto does not consider himself an extrovert.

Matz

This is the nickname — and essentially a second name — used by Yukihiro Matsumoto since the early days of the internet. Today, it has effectively become his official name within the Ruby community.

The nickname also appears in the name of Ruby’s main implementation — MRI (Matz’s Ruby Interpreter).

So when you hear a Ruby developer say “Matz,” they mean Yukihiro Matsumoto — and it is never meant disrespectfully. It is always said with respect!

See also James Gosling: The Creator of Java and His Impact on Tech History.