Ruby
/ROO-bee/ · noun · Development · Origin: 1995
Definitions
A dynamic, object-oriented scripting language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, known as Matz, and first released in 1995, with the explicit goal of making programmers happy. In Ruby everything is an object, including numbers and nil, and syntax favours readability, with optional parentheses and English-like method names. Blocks, closures passed to methods with do...end or braces, are central to the style, as in collection.each or File.open. Ruby's open classes and metaprogramming let libraries define readable domain-specific languages, which is why tools such as RSpec, Rake, and Rails read almost like prose; the same power makes behaviour harder to trace. Ruby on Rails, released in 2004, carried the language into mainstream web development. The reference implementation, MRI or CRuby, has gained substantial speed from the YJIT just-in-time compiler, and alternatives include JRuby on the JVM and TruffleRuby.
In plain English: A programming language designed to be enjoyable to write, best known for the Ruby on Rails framework that powers many popular websites.
Example: Basecamp, GitHub, Shopify, Airbnb — they all started with Ruby on Rails, and some of them still run on it.
Origin Story
The gemstone that came after Pearl
Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto began designing Ruby in 1993 in Japan. He wanted a language more powerful than Perl and more object-oriented than Python. When choosing a name, he and a colleague chatted online about names inspired by gemstones -- a nod to Perl (pearl).
They considered **Coral** but settled on **Ruby**, the birthstone for July (Matz's colleague Keiju Ishitsuka's birth month). The name also suggested something precious and beautiful, which aligned with Matz's philosophy that programming should be joyful.
Ruby remained relatively niche until 2005, when David Heinemeier Hansson released **Ruby on Rails** and demonstrated building a blog engine in 15 minutes. The framework's success made Ruby one of the most popular languages of the Web 2.0 era.
Coined by: Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto
Context: Japan, 1993 (released 1995)
Fun fact: Matz's design philosophy is 'MINASWAN' -- Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice. The Ruby community is famous for its friendliness, which Matz considers a direct feature of the language.