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

software programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

best known as the chief designer of the

Ruby 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 sapph ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). , Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of the Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organization within Rakuten Group, 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, Nara ...

, Japan, he was raised in Tottori 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 List of national universities in Japan, national research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. The university has 28 college clusters and schools with around 16,500 students (as of 2014). The main Tsukuba ca ...

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 Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

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, s ...

-based mail user agent, written entirely in

Emacs Lisp Emacs Lisp is a Lisp dialect made for Emacs. It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Emacs, the remainder being written in C, as is the Lisp interpreter. Emacs Lisp code is used to modify, extend and customi ...

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

Ruby

Matsumoto released the first version of the Ruby programming language on 21 December 1995. He still leads the development of the language's reference implementation,

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to generate pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes inside the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and rad ...

(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, ritevm, and is designed to allow software developers to embed Ruby in other programs while keeping

memory footprint Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running. The word footprint generally refers to the extent of physical dimensions that an object occupies, giving a sense of its size. In computing, t ...

small and performance optimized.

streem

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

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

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 Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

, with influences from Ruby, Erlang, and other

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declarat ...

languages.

Treasure Data

Matsumoto has been listed as an investor for

Treasure Data Treasure Data is a privately held company that provides customer data platforms in the form of data management and analytics software. The company developed Fluentd, a Cross-platform software, cross-platform Open-source software, open-source data ...

; many of the company's programs such as

Fluentd Fluentd is a cross platform, cross-platform open-source software, open-source data collection software project originally developed at Treasure Data. It is written primarily in the C (Programming Language), C programming language with a thin-Ruby ...

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 The 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 the a ...

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. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF) at the 2012 LibrePlanet conference at the

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

in Boston. Matz' demeanor has brought about a motto in the Ruby community: "Matz is nice and so we are nice," commonly abbreviated as MINASWAN.

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 Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

, having performed standard

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who 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.Thoma ...

service and become a counselor in the bishopric in his church ward.

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 Living people Free software programmers Japanese computer programmers Japanese computer scientists Japanese Latter Day Saints People from Osaka Prefecture People from Tottori Prefecture Scientists from Osaka Prefecture Scientists from Tottori Prefecture Programming language designers Rakuten Ruby (programming language) University of Tsukuba alumni