Start Here

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

1. _why the lucky stiff

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

2. Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto

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

3. Ruby was named before it existed

   The name came first, in a chat, before a single line of code.

4. David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

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

5. Rails was pulled out of Basecamp

   Rails was never built as a product. It was extracted from a real app, then a screencast made it explode.

6. "How to build a blog in 15 minutes with Rails" (DHH, 2005)

   The demo that launched Rails, and a generation of Ruby programmers.

7. Aaron Patterson ("tenderlove")

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

8. "Wat" (Gary Bernhardt, 2012)

   Four minutes of programming comedy that everyone has seen.

9. MINASWAN

   "Matz is nice and so we are nice." The community's core social rule.

10. "Optimize for programmer happiness"

    Ruby's founding value: bend the language toward joy, not the machine.

11. Chunky bacon

    A nonsense catchphrase from _why's Poignant Guide, and a pure inside joke.

12. The Pickaxe

    The nickname for the first big English Ruby book (there is a pickaxe on the cover).

13. Convention over Configuration

    Rails' defining idea: sensible defaults instead of endless setup.

14. "Rails is omakase"

    Let the framework choose for you, like a sushi chef's tasting menu.

15. The Christmas-release tradition

    Ruby gives itself to the community as a present, almost every December 25.

16. Ruby 1.0

    Ruby's first public 1.0 release, delivered on Christmas Day.

17. Ruby 3.0

    The "Ruby 3x3" promise, delivered on Christmas Day 2020.