20 Years of Ruby

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Hello everyone,

As hard to believe as it is, 20 years ago the first public version of Ruby saw the light of day. Ruby 0.95 was announced by Yukihiro Matsumoto, now widely known as Matz. Over these 20 years a lot of developers have discovered Ruby and fell in love with it, including us at JetBrains. Hopefully there are many more younger people who will do the same one day. Hurray to the whole Ruby community who has helped make this history happen!

To look back on the interesting and eventful journey of Ruby today, we’ve come up with a series of humorous cartoons illustrating the Ruby timeline. We invite you to celebrate the anniversary with us.

DISCLAIMER: All graphical characters appearing in the illustrations are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons is coincidental.

After reading the story, make sure to scroll down and look for a small gift we’ve prepared for you. Enjoy!



Conception February 24, 1993

Ruby conceived in a discussion between Yukihiro Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka. “I knew Perl (Perl4, not Perl5), but I didn’t like it really, because it had smell of toy language (it still has). The object-oriented scripting language seemed very promising. I knew Python then. But I didn’t like it, because I didn’t think it was a true object-oriented language. OO features are appeared to be add-on to the language. I, as a language mania and OO fan for 15 years, really really wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use object-oriented scripting language. I looked for, but couldn’t find one. So, I decided to make it.” – Yukihiro Matsumoto, ruby-talk Birth

December 21, 1995

Matz publishes the first public version of Ruby (0.95) to various Japanese domestic newsgroups. First steps

December 25, 1996

Ruby 1.0 is released. The release coincides with the launch of the Japanese-language ruby-list mailing list,

the first mailing list for the new language. 1997

Matz announces that Netlab has hired him to be a full-time Ruby developer (July 1). Ruby 1.1 is released (August 13). The first article on the web about Ruby is published (September 22).

1998

Ruby Application Archive is launched, maintained manually by Matz (May 15). Matz creates a simple English homepage for Ruby (December 7). The first English language Ruby mailing list, Ruby-Talk, is created (December 17). The first stable version released: Ruby 1.2 (December 25). Ruby is gaining popularity in Japan. Childhood

1999

Ruby 1.4 is released (August 13). Yukihiro Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka write the first book on Ruby, The Object-oriented Scripting Language Ruby (October 27). Ruby begins to spread beyond Japan. 2000

Ruby overtakes Python in Japan. Some Perl and Ruby/Perl conferences are held during this time also. Around 20 books on Ruby are published in Japanese. Ruby 1.6 is released (September 19). 2001

Yet Another Ruby and Perl Conference takes place (May 26). The first RubyConf conference opens (October 12). The first English book on Ruby, Programming Ruby (“The Pickaxe”), is published (December 15). 2002

The English-language mailing list ‘ruby-talk’ outnumbers the Japanese-language mailing list ‘ruby-list’ (February 16).

2003

The first Euruko conference opens (July 21). Ruby 1.8 is released with many of changes (August 4), becoming part of multiple industry standards. Lightweight Languages Workshop at MIT holds discussions about Ruby (November 8). 2004

RubyGems is released to the public (March 14). DHH extracts Ruby on Rails and officially releases version 0.8.0 as open source code (October 25). Adolescence

2005

Agile Web Development with Rails is published (July 15). Rails 1.0 is released (December 13). The Ruby community is almost taken over by the Rails framework. Ruby in turn becomes very popular. JetBrains starts working on a Ruby plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.

2006

The first Japanese Ruby conference, RubyKaigi, opens (June 10). The first RailsConf takes place in Chicago (June 23). IntelliJ IDEA Ruby Plugin is released.

2007

Ruby 1.8.6 is released (March 13). Apple begins shipping Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X v10.5 ‘Leopard,’ released in October. Rails 2.0 is released (December 7).

2008-2009

JetBrains announces a RubyMine, a dedicated Ruby IDE, and opens a public preview for it (November 1, 2008). Merb 1.0 is announced by Yehuda Katz at RubyConf (November 7, 2008) and merged with Rails (December 23, 2008). RubyMine 1.0 is released (April 28, 2009). First Ruby Heroes are named. Adulthood 2011

Rails 3.1 is released (August 31). The stable Ruby 1.9.3 is released (October 30) with new methods and Hash syntax, new Socket API, new encoding support, RubyGems and much more on board. 2012

Ruby adopts a cat. 2013

Ruby 2.0.0 is released bringing many stabilizing changes to the language (February 24). Rails 4.0 is released, introducing Russian Doll Caching, Turbolinks, and Live Streaming, as well as making Active Resource, ActiveRecord Observer and other components optional by splitting them as gems (June 25). The Future You tell us! And that is not all. What’s a birthday without a gift? On this memorable occasion we’re giving every Ruby developer a small present: 20% off on your new yearly subscription before January 5! If you already have one, share this discount with a friend who doesn’t! Sources http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/382

http://cephas.net/blog/2003/11/12/2003-lightweight-languages-workshop-notes

https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/History.txt

https://rubygems.org/gems/rails/versions

http://railsapps.github.io/rails-release-history.html

http://lanyrd.com/conferences

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45.Agile_Web_Development_with_Rails

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/1293?pr=

http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge

https://blog.jetbrains.com/ruby/2008/11/rubymine-new-ruby-and-rails-ide-from-jetbrains

https://blog.jetbrains.com/ruby/2009/04/meet-jetbrains-rubymine-10-%E2%80%94-a-brand-new-ide-for-ruby-and-rails

http://www.sitepoint.com/history-ruby

http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2006/10/20/rubyconf-history-of-ruby

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Let’s make Ruby happy by using the best Ruby and Rails IDE!

The RubyMine Team

