The history of Ruby is interesting. Ruby is a general purpose object oriented programming language that is written in C. It was built combining features of four other programming languages: Smarttalk, Eiffel, Lisp, and Perl. Ruby programmers took the best of each those four programming languages and combined them to create Ruby.
Ruby was designed with simplicity in mind. The Ruby programmers did not want individual programmers to re-invent the wheel for common tasks over and over. They wanted a programming language that could easily re-create common tasks. The only reason to have to program a common task was if the programmer wanted to step outside the normal functions of Ruby.
In February 1993, Yukihiro Matsumoto thought up the idea of a new programming language. He has stated the reason for his decision to develop a new programming language was “I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object oriented than Python. That’s why I decided to design my own language.”
During an online 1993 chat with friend, Keiju Ishitsuka, names were discussed for his new programming language. Those names were eventually whittled down to just two names: Coral and Ruby. After their conversation, Matsumoto considered both names but finally decided on Ruby because it was the birthstone of one of his co-workers and Ruby was born.
In December 1995, Ruby version 0.95 was released in Japanese domestic newsgroups. Of course, it did not stay at version 0.95 very long because three later versions were released in the next two days. During the first three days, a Ruby mailing list was created. It continues to this day.
Even these earliest versions had many of the same features that are available in much later version of Rudy. They include garbage collection, classes with inheritance, iterators, object oriented design, closures, exception handling, and mixins. All of these features are still in the version of Ruby.
In December 1996, Ruby Version 1.0 was official released once again to Japanese domestic newsgroups. It was not until after the release of Ruby Version 1.3 in 1999 that Ruby started gaining ground in English speaking countries. In fact, at that time, Ruby-Talk was the first English mailing list for Ruby. It marked a turning point for Ruby as a growing programming interest outside of Japan.
Ruby’s biggest turning point happened about six years later in 2005 when Ruby on Rails was created. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework written entirely in Ruby. Later that same year, Apple decided to bundle and ship it with the new Mac OS X operating system, Leopard. Once it started shipping with the Leopard operating system, interest in Ruby exploded.
Many newsgroups and online forums were created for the sole purpose of talking about Ruby and how to improve the programming language in the next version. Although there is a small core of computer programmers who are the main developers of Ruby, many people help in its development.
In 2011, the latest stable version of Ruby was released. Version 1.9.3 is the latest version and was released around the world at the same time.
History of Ruby
The History of Ruby
Ruby on Rails Development
The history of Ruby is interesting. Ruby is a general purpose object oriented programming language that is written in C. It was built combining features of four other programming languages: Smarttalk, Eiffel, Lisp, and Perl. Ruby programmers took the best of each those four programming languages and combined them to create Ruby.
Ruby was designed with simplicity in mind. The Ruby programmers did not want individual programmers to re-invent the wheel for common tasks over and over. They wanted a programming language that could easily re-create common tasks. The only reason to have to program a common task was if the programmer wanted to step outside the normal functions of Ruby.
In February 1993, Yukihiro Matsumoto thought up the idea of a new programming language. He has stated the reason for his decision to develop a new programming language was “I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object oriented than Python. That’s why I decided to design my own language.”
During an online 1993 chat with friend, Keiju Ishitsuka, names were discussed for his new programming language. Those names were eventually whittled down to just two names: Coral and Ruby. After their conversation, Matsumoto considered both names but finally decided on Ruby because it was the birthstone of one of his co-workers and Ruby was born.
In December 1995, Ruby version 0.95 was released in Japanese domestic newsgroups. Of course, it did not stay at version 0.95 very long because three later versions were released in the next two days. During the first three days, a Ruby mailing list was created. It continues to this day.
Even these earliest versions had many of the same features that are available in much later version of Rudy. They include garbage collection, classes with inheritance, iterators, object oriented design, closures, exception handling, and mixins. All of these features are still in the version of Ruby.
In December 1996, Ruby Version 1.0 was official released once again to Japanese domestic newsgroups. It was not until after the release of Ruby Version 1.3 in 1999 that Ruby started gaining ground in English speaking countries. In fact, at that time, Ruby-Talk was the first English mailing list for Ruby. It marked a turning point for Ruby as a growing programming interest outside of Japan.
Ruby’s biggest turning point happened about six years later in 2005 when Ruby on Rails was created. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework written entirely in Ruby. Later that same year, Apple decided to bundle and ship it with the new Mac OS X operating system, Leopard. Once it started shipping with the Leopard operating system, interest in Ruby exploded.
Many newsgroups and online forums were created for the sole purpose of talking about Ruby and how to improve the programming language in the next version. Although there is a small core of computer programmers who are the main developers of Ruby, many people help in its development.
In 2011, the latest stable version of Ruby was released. Version 1.9.3 is the latest version and was released around the world at the same time.