It's February 24, so we celebrate Ruby's 25th birthday! 😉 We at iRonin, a top Ruby on Rails development company, would like to wish one of our favorites a happy birthday!
Yukihiro Matsumoto started developing Ruby on February 24, 1993. Ruby's first ubiquitous "hello world" program ran in the summer of that same year.
“(1993) I really wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use scripting language. I looked for, but couldn't find one. So I decided to make it…(later in 2008). I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy."
Yukihiro Matsumoto
The name "Ruby" was decided on during an online chat session between Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka on February 24, 1993, before any code had been written for the language. They were joking that the project must be code-named after a precious gemstone (à la Perl). So his friend came up with "ruby" - after the glistening red gemstone. And so the story goes; it eventually became the official name of the language.
Later, he found out that pearl is the birthstone for June, and ruby is the birthstone for July, so the Ruby name is appropriate for a natural progression along from Perl.
Today, we are celebrating 25 years of Ruby. One of the most elegant, simple, and in-use programming languages, we think she'll be around for many more years to come - and we're interested to see what else she has in store!
For Ruby projects or insights, turn to iRonin - the team with deep Ruby expertise.
