Yukihiro Matsumoto is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz’s Ruby Interpreter. Wikipedia
Born: April 14, 1965 (age 49), Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Education: University of Tsukuba
Books: The Ruby Programming Language, Ruby in a Nutshell
Early life[edit]
Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, he was raised in Tottori Prefecture from the age of four. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school.[2] He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba, where he was a member of Ikuo Nakata’s research lab on programming languages and compilers.
Born: April 14, 1965 (age 49), Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Education: University of Tsukuba
Books: The Ruby Programming Language, Ruby in a Nutshell
Early life[edit]
Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, he was raised in Tottori Prefecture from the age of four. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school.[2] He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba, where he was a member of Ikuo Nakata’s research lab on programming languages and compilers.
Work[edit]
He worked for the Japanese open source company, netlab.jp. Matsumoto is also known as one of the open source evangelists in Japan. He’s released several open source products, including cmail, the Emacs-based mail user agent, written entirely in Emacs Lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside of Japan.[3]
He worked for the Japanese open source company, netlab.jp. Matsumoto is also known as one of the open source evangelists in Japan. He’s released several open source products, including cmail, the Emacs-based mail user agent, written entirely in Emacs Lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside of Japan.[3]
Ruby[edit]
Matsumoto released the first version of the Ruby programming language on 21 December 1995.[4][5] He still leads the development of the language’s reference implementation, MRI (for Matz’s Ruby Interpreter).
Matsumoto released the first version of the Ruby programming language on 21 December 1995.[4][5] He still leads the development of the language’s reference implementation, MRI (for Matz’s Ruby Interpreter).
MRuby[edit]
In April 2012, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new implementation of Ruby called mruby.[6][7] It’s a minimal implementation based on his virtual machine, called ritevm, and is designed to allow software developers to embed Ruby in other programs while keeping memory footprint small and performance optimised.
In April 2012, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new implementation of Ruby called mruby.[6][7] It’s a minimal implementation based on his virtual machine, called ritevm, and is designed to allow software developers to embed Ruby in other programs while keeping memory footprint small and performance optimised.
streem[edit]
In December 2014, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new scripting language called streem, a concurrent language based on a programming
In December 2014, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new scripting language called streem, a concurrent language based on a programming
About Ruby
Wondering why Ruby is so popular? Its fans call it a beautiful, artful language. And yet, they say it’s handy and practical. What gives?
Wondering why Ruby is so popular? Its fans call it a beautiful, artful language. And yet, they say it’s handy and practical. What gives?
The Ideals of Ruby’s Creator
Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.
Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.
He has often said that he is “trying to make Ruby natural, not simple,” in a way that mirrors life.
Building on this, he adds:
Ruby is simple in appearance, but is very complex inside, just like our human body1.
About Ruby’s Growth
Since its public release in 1995, Ruby has drawn devoted coders worldwide. In 2006, Ruby achieved mass acceptance. With active user groups formed in the world’s major cities and Ruby-related conferences filled to capacity.
Since its public release in 1995, Ruby has drawn devoted coders worldwide. In 2006, Ruby achieved mass acceptance. With active user groups formed in the world’s major cities and Ruby-related conferences filled to capacity.
Graph courtesy of
Gmane.
Ruby-Talk, the primary mailing list for discussion of the Ruby language, climbed to an average of 200 messages per day in 2006. It has dropped in recent years as the size of the community pushed discussion from one central list into many smaller groups.
Gmane.
Ruby-Talk, the primary mailing list for discussion of the Ruby language, climbed to an average of 200 messages per day in 2006. It has dropped in recent years as the size of the community pushed discussion from one central list into many smaller groups.
Ruby is ranked among the top 10 on most of the indices that measure the growth and popularity of programming languages worldwide (such as the TIOBE index). Much of the growth is attributed to the popularity of software written in Ruby, particularly the Ruby on Rails web framework.
Ruby is also completely free. Not only free of charge, but also free to use, copy, modify, and distribute.
Seeing Everything as an Object
Initially, Matz looked at other languages to find an ideal syntax. Recalling his search, he said, “I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python2.”
Initially, Matz looked at other languages to find an ideal syntax. Recalling his search, he said, “I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python2.”
In Ruby, everything is an object. Every bit of information and code can be given their own properties and actions. Object-oriented programming calls properties by the name instance variables and actions are known as methods. Ruby’s pure object-oriented approach is most commonly demonstrated by a bit of code which applies an action to a number.
5.times { print “We love Ruby — it’s outrageous!” }
In many languages, numbers and other primitive types are not objects. Ruby follows the influence of the Smalltalk language by giving methods and instance variables to all of its types. This eases one’s use of Ruby, since rules applying to objects apply to all of Ruby.
In many languages, numbers and other primitive types are not objects. Ruby follows the influence of the Smalltalk language by giving methods and instance variables to all of its types. This eases one’s use of Ruby, since rules applying to objects apply to all of Ruby.
Ruby’s Flexibility
Ruby is seen as a flexible language, since it allows its users to freely alter its parts. Essential parts of Ruby can be removed or redefined, at will. Existing parts can be added upon. Ruby tries not to restrict the coder.
Ruby is seen as a flexible language, since it allows its users to freely alter its parts. Essential parts of Ruby can be removed or redefined, at will. Existing parts can be added upon. Ruby tries not to restrict the coder.
For example, addition is performed with the plus (+) operator. But, if you’d rather use the readable word plus, you could add such a method to Ruby’s builtin Numeric class.
class Numeric
def plus(x)
self.+(x)
end
end
def plus(x)
self.+(x)
end
end
y = 5.plus 6
y is now equal to 11
Ruby’s operators are syntactic sugar for methods. You can redefine them as well.
Blocks: a Truly Expressive Feature
Ruby’s block are also seen as a source of great flexibility. A programmer can attach a closure to any method, describing how that method should act. The closure is called a block and has become one of the most popular features for newcomers to Ruby from other imperative languages like PHP or Visual Basic.
Ruby’s block are also seen as a source of great flexibility. A programmer can attach a closure to any method, describing how that method should act. The closure is called a block and has become one of the most popular features for newcomers to Ruby from other imperative languages like PHP or Visual Basic.
Blocks are inspired by functional languages. Matz said, “in Ruby closures, I wanted to respect the Lisp culture3.”
search_engines =
%w[Google Yahoo MSN].map do |engine|
“http://www.” + engine.downcase + “.com”
end
In the above code, the block is described inside the do … end construct. The map method applies the block to the provided list of words. Many other methods in Ruby leave a hole open for a coder to write their own block to fill in the details of what that method should do.
%w[Google Yahoo MSN].map do |engine|
“http://www.” + engine.downcase + “.com”
end
In the above code, the block is described inside the do … end construct. The map method applies the block to the provided list of words. Many other methods in Ruby leave a hole open for a coder to write their own block to fill in the details of what that method should do.
Ruby and the Mixin
Unlike many object-oriented languages, Ruby features single inheritance only, on purpose. But Ruby knows the concept of modules (called Categories in Objective-C). Modules are collections of methods.
Unlike many object-oriented languages, Ruby features single inheritance only, on purpose. But Ruby knows the concept of modules (called Categories in Objective-C). Modules are collections of methods.
Classes can mixin a module and receive all its methods for free. For example, any class which implements the each method can mixin the Enumerable module, which adds a pile of methods that use each for looping.
class MyArray
include Enumerable
end
Generally, Rubyists see this as a much clearer way than multiple inheritance, which is complex and can be too restrictive.
include Enumerable
end
Generally, Rubyists see this as a much clearer way than multiple inheritance, which is complex and can be too restrictive.
Ruby’s Visual Appearance
While Ruby often uses very limited punctuation and usually prefers English keywords, some punctuation is used to decorate Ruby. Ruby needs no variable declarations. It uses simple naming conventions to denote the scope of variables.
While Ruby often uses very limited punctuation and usually prefers English keywords, some punctuation is used to decorate Ruby. Ruby needs no variable declarations. It uses simple naming conventions to denote the scope of variables.
var could be a local variable.
@var is an instance variable.
$var is a global variable.
These sigils enhance readability by allowing the programmer to easily identify the roles of each variable. It also becomes unnecessary to use a tiresome self. prepended to every instance member.
@var is an instance variable.
$var is a global variable.
These sigils enhance readability by allowing the programmer to easily identify the roles of each variable. It also becomes unnecessary to use a tiresome self. prepended to every instance member.
