People

The people whose names get invoked over and over in Ruby's history.

• _why the lucky stiff

  The artist who made Ruby feel like play, then vanished.

• Aaron Patterson ("tenderlove")

  On both the Ruby and Rails core teams, and the community's favorite comedian.

• Chad Fowler

  A community architect who helped build the gatherings and the nonprofit that hold the Ruby world together, and wrote the career book many programmers grew up on.

• Dave Thomas ("PragDave")

  The co-author whose book carried Ruby out of Japan and into the English-speaking world.

• David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

  Created Rails, which is how most people meet Ruby, and a lightning rod for strong opinions.

• Gary Bernhardt

  The person behind "Wat," and behind some of the most careful teaching in the Ruby world.

• Jim Weirich

  The teacher who built Rake, could explain anything, and whose passing the whole community grieved.

• José Valim

  A Rails Core alum who took Ruby's love of programmer happiness and built a whole new language around it: Elixir.

• Katrina Owen

  She built the free coding-practice platform that mentors a million learners, and co-wrote the book on writing better objects.

• Koichi Sasada

  The engineer who gave Ruby a real engine, then taught it to run many things at once.

• Nobuyoshi Nakada

  The "Patch Monster": report a Ruby bug and a fix seems to appear before you finish your coffee.

• Sandi Metz

  Ruby's clear voice on object design, and the person who taught the community when NOT to abstract.

• Sarah Mei

  Co-founder of RailsBridge, and one of the clearest voices for the idea that code is really about people.

• Steve Klabnik

  The Rubyist who saved a beloved artist's final work, then went on to write Rust's official book.

• Yehuda Katz

  The Rubyist who gave Ruby its dependency manager, then carried that build-the-tools instinct into JavaScript and Rust.

• Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto

  The creator who decided a programming language should make you happy.

• Yusuke Endoh ("mame")

  The Ruby committer who turns the language into playful art: quines, spinning globes, and a contest for the weirdest programs imaginable.