, also known as Matz, is a Japanese computer scientist and

software programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

best known as the chief designer of the

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). His demeanor has brought about a motto in the Ruby community: "Matz is nice and so we are nice," commonly abbreviated as MINASWAN. , Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at

Heroku Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Jav ...

, an online cloud

platform-as-a-service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computin ...

in San Francisco. He is a fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organization in

Rakuten () is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...

Inc. He was appointed to the role of technical advisor for VASILY, Inc. starting in June 2014.

Early life

Born in

Osaka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Nar ...

, Japan, he was raised in

Tottori Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Tottori Prefecture is the least populous prefecture of Japan at 570,569 (2016) and has a geographic area of . Tottori Prefecture borders Shimane Prefecture to the west, Hiro ...

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. He graduated with an information science degree from

University of Tsukuba is a public university, public research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. It is a top 10 Designated National University, and was ranked Type A by the Japanese government as part of the Top Global University Pro ...

, where he was a member of Ikuo Nakata's research lab on programming languages and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

Work

He works for the Japanese open source company Netlab.jp. Matsumoto is known as one of the open source evangelists in Japan. He has released several open source products, including cmail, the

Emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...

-based mail user agent, written entirely in

Emacs Lisp Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used as a scripting language by Emacs (a text editor family most commonly associated with GNU Emacs and XEmacs). It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Em ...

. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside Japan.

Ruby

Matsumoto released the first version of the

Ruby programming language Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language which supports multiple programming paradigms. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including p ...

on 21 December 1995. He still leads the development of the language's reference implementation, MRI (for Matz's Ruby Interpreter).

MRuby

In April 2012, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new implementation of Ruby called mruby. It is 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

In December 2014, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...

called ''streem'', a concurrent language based on a programming model similar to

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, with influences from Ruby, Erlang and other

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions tha ...

languages.

Treasure Data

Matsumoto has been listed as an investor for Treasure Data; many of the company's programs such as Fluentd use Ruby as their primary language.

Written works

* ''オブジェクト指向スクリプト言語 Ruby'' * ''Ruby in a Nutshell'' * ''The Ruby Programming Language''

Recognition

Matsumoto received the 2011

Award for the Advancement of Free Software Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit. Presentation ceremonies In 1999 it was pr ...

from the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

(FSF) at the 2012

LibrePlanet LibrePlanet (literally, "Free Planet") is a community project created and supported by the Free Software Foundation. Its objective is the promotion of free software around the world by bringing every year an international conference to local comm ...

conference at the

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massa ...

in Boston.

Personal life

Matsumoto is married and has four children. He is a member of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

, did standard service as a

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

and is now a counselor in the bishopric in his church

ward Ward may refer to: Division or unit * Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward * Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...

References

External links

Matz's web diary
(an
translated to English
with Google Translate)

from IT Conversations
The Ruby Programming Language
– An introduction to the language by its own author
Treating Code as an Essay
– Matz's writeup for the book ''Beautiful Code'', edited by Andy Oram, Greg Wilson, O'Reilly, 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Matsumoto, Yukihiro 1965 births Free software programmers Japanese computer programmers Japanese computer scientists Japanese Latter Day Saints Living people People from Osaka Prefecture People from Tottori Prefecture Programming language designers Rakuten Ruby (programming language) University of Tsukuba alumni