# Start Here

New here? This is the guided walk through Ruby Lore, in a sensible order, start to finish.

1. [Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/matz.md): The creator who decided a programming language should make you happy.
2. [Ruby was named before it existed](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/named-before-it-existed.md): The name came first, in a chat, before a single line of code.
3. ["Optimize for programmer happiness"](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/optimize-for-programmer-happiness.md): Ruby's founding value: bend the language toward joy, not the machine.
4. [MINASWAN](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/minaswan.md): "Matz is nice and so we are nice." The community's core social rule.
5. [_why the lucky stiff](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/why-the-lucky-stiff.md): The artist who made Ruby feel like play, then vanished.
6. [Chunky bacon](https://chunkybacon.dev/glossary/chunky-bacon.md): A nonsense catchphrase from _why's Poignant Guide, and a pure inside joke.
7. [David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/dhh.md): Created Rails, which is how most people meet Ruby, and a lightning rod for strong opinions.
8. [Rails was pulled out of Basecamp](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/rails-from-basecamp.md): Rails was never built as a product. It was extracted from a real app, then a screencast made it explode.
9. [The Christmas-release tradition](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/the-christmas-release-tradition.md): Ruby gives itself to the community as a present, almost every December 25.
10. [Ruby 3.0](https://chunkybacon.dev/timeline/ruby-3-0.md): The "Ruby 3x3" promise, delivered on Christmas Day 2020.
11. [Ruby 4.0](https://chunkybacon.dev/timeline/ruby-4-0.md): Ruby 4.0, delivered on Christmas Day 2025, introducing ZJIT and the experimental Ruby Box.

---

Source: https://chunkybacon.dev/start-here/
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)