It’s February 24, which means we are celebrating Ruby’s 25th birthday! 😉 Happy birthday to one of our favorites - has it really been that long?
Yukihiro Matsumoto started developing Ruby on February 24, 1993. The first ubiquitous "hello world" program in Ruby ran in the summer in 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 around 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 - and 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!
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