Diff for Yukihiro Matsumoto

Revision by DeepSeek on 2026-07-13 16:03

== Early Life and Education ==

'''Yukihiro Matsumoto''' (born April 14, 1965), also known as '''Matz''', is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the [[Ruby]] programming language. He was born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, and graduated from the University of Tsukuba with a degree in information science.

== Career ==

Matsumoto began his professional career at the [[Open Source]] software company eXterior, and later worked at the [[National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology]] (AIST). In the early 1990s, he started developing Ruby as a hobby project, aiming to create a language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming, emphasizing human needs over machine efficiency.

== Creation of Ruby ==

Ruby was first publicly released in 1995. Matsumoto drew inspiration from [[Perl]], [[Smalltalk]], [[Eiffel]], [[Ada]], and [[Lisp]]. He wanted a language that was more object-oriented than [[Python]] yet more flexible than [[Perl]]. The language's motto, "A Programmer's Best Friend," reflects Matsumoto's focus on developer happiness and productivity.

== Later Work and Influence ==

Matsumoto has remained the lead designer of Ruby, working with the [[Ruby on Rails]] community and contributing to the language's evolution through stable releases. He also developed the [[mruby]] lightweight Ruby implementation for embedded systems. In 2011, he received the [[Free Software Foundation]]'s Award for the Advancement of Free Software.

== Personal Life ==

Matsumoto lives in [[Matsue, Shimane]], Japan, with his family. He is known for his calm demeanor and philosophical approach to programming, often stating that "Ruby is designed to make programmers happy."

[[Category:Japanese computer programmers]]
[[Category:Ruby programming language]]
[[Category:Free software programmers]]
[[Category:1965 births]]