Yukihiro Matsumoto
Born 1965 · Age 60
Japanese computer scientist and software programmer, chief designer of the Ruby programming language and original author/maintainer of MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter).
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Life & Career Timeline
Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Yukihiro Matsumoto (aka Matz) was born in Osaka Prefecture.
Started programming (encountered BASIC)
Discovered programming via a BASIC interpreter on his father's computer and began programming (self-taught).
Completed high school (self-taught programmer until then)
Was a self-taught programmer through the end of high school.
Enrolled at University of Tsukuba (information science)
Studied information science at the University of Tsukuba (approximate enrollment year based on graduation year).
Encountered and experimented with Emacs
Met/started experimenting with Emacs on Sun workstation; Emacs and its Lisp implementation influenced his later work.
Joined/started working at Netlab.jp (approx.)
Began working for Japanese open-source company Netlab.jp (sources say late 1980s); worked on open-source software and became an open-source evangelist in Japan.
Graduated University of Tsukuba (BS Information Science)
Graduated with a degree in information science; was a member of Ikuo Nakata's research lab focused on programming languages and compilers.
Developed cmail (Emacs-based mail user agent)
Released 'cmail', an Emacs Lisp-based mail client — one of his early open-source projects (used daily by him).
Began development of Ruby
Started working on a new scripting language (Ruby) combining features of Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp and others to make a programmer-friendly object-oriented scripting language.
Implemented ruby-mode.el for Emacs
Wrote an Emacs major mode for Ruby to support auto-indentation; this tooling work influenced Ruby's syntax decisions.
Released Ruby alpha
Published an alpha/early version of Ruby (development phase prior to public 1995 release).
Released first public version of Ruby (0.95)
Official public release of the Ruby programming language (commonly cited date: 21 December 1995).
Hired to work on Ruby full-time at Netlab (approx.)
Soon after Ruby's initial release he was employed to work on Ruby full-time by Netlab (sources indicate post-release hiring).
English-language Ruby mailing list started
English Ruby mailing list began (important milestone in Ruby's international growth).
Programming Ruby ("Pickaxe") published — Western adoption milestone
Dave Thomas published Programming Ruby in 2000, which greatly increased Ruby adoption in English-speaking countries (milestone for the language).
Published 'Ruby in a Nutshell' (Japanese/English editions cited)
Matsumoto authored/appeared in Ruby reference materials; 'Ruby in a Nutshell' is credited to the era (listed on Wikipedia).
English Ruby community outgrows Japanese mailing list
By 2002 the English-language Ruby mailing list had more traffic than the original Japanese list — sign of international adoption.
Ruby on Rails emergence accelerates Ruby adoption (mid-2000s)
The release and growth of Ruby on Rails (Rails) rapidly increased Ruby's popularity internationally (Rails became the 'killer app' for Ruby).
RubyTalk messaging peaks (~200 messages/day in 2006)
Ruby-Talk mailing list reached roughly 200 messages per day in 2006 (indicator of community activity).
Spoke at Brigham Young University (Ruby: History, Philosophy & Application)
Gave a presentation on Ruby at BYU (October 2006 — slides/video recorded).
Contributed 'Treating Code as an Essay' for Beautiful Code (2007)
Author contribution 'Treating Code as an Essay' included in the anthology Beautiful Code (editorial contribution noted in external links).
Co-authored 'The Ruby Programming Language' (with David Flanagan)
Published 'The Ruby Programming Language' (2008) — an authoritative reference co-authored with David Flanagan.
Google Tech Talk (slides referencing programmer happiness)
Gave a Google tech talk in 2008 where he stated Ruby's primary purpose is programmer happiness (slide widely cited).
Named Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku (as of 2011)
Listed as Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku (online cloud PaaS) as of 2011 — role in San Francisco helping Ruby integration/architecture.
Award for the Advancement of Free Software (FSF) announced for 2011
Free Software Foundation announced he received the 2011 Award for the Advancement of Free Software (presented at LibrePlanet 2012).
Gave 'How Emacs Changed My Life' talk at LibrePlanet
Talk describing Emacs' influence on his development of Ruby and language implementation techniques.
Accepted FSF Award at LibrePlanet (FSF – Award for Advancement of Free Software)
Presented/accepted the FSF Award at the LibrePlanet conference (UMass Boston) in March 2012.
Open-sourced mruby (lightweight Ruby implementation)
Announced and open-sourced mruby (April 2012): a minimal embeddable Ruby implementation using his ritevm virtual machine.
Listed as investor in Treasure Data (approx.)
Listed as an investor for Treasure Data; the company's programs such as Fluentd use Ruby heavily (archive snapshot references investor listing).
Appointed Technical Advisor for VASILY, Inc.
Named technical advisor to VASILY, Inc. starting June 2014 (press release archived June 2014).
Open-sourced streem (new concurrent scripting language)
Released streem, a concurrent scripting language influenced by Ruby, Erlang and functional languages (open-sourced December 2014).
Continued leadership of MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter)
Ongoing: remains a lead/maintainer of MRI, the reference implementation of Ruby (continues to direct language development).
Public appearances and continued community leadership
Continues to present at conferences (e.g., photos show him speaking in 2018) and remains an influential figure in the Ruby community.
Fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology (listed role)
Listed as a fellow at Rakuten Institute of Technology (research & development organization within Rakuten Group) — date not specified in sources.
Ruby continues to be widely used; Matz remains principal designer
As of 2024 Matz remains the chief designer of Ruby and continues to shepherd language improvements (ongoing language leadership).
Personal: married and father of four
Publicly noted to be married with four children; also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has served as a missionary and as a counselor in a bishopric (dates not specified).
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