Ruby's first public release, shared to a Japanese newsgroup two days before Christmas 1995.
Ruby’s first public release was version 0.95, distributed on December 21, 1995 to fj.sources, one of the Japanese Usenet newsgroups (the “fj” hierarchy stands for “from Japan”). This was the language’s public birth, roughly two years after Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto settled on the name and started building it (Ruby was named before it existed).
The “0.95” is just a version number below 1.0, marking it as an early, pre-1.0 build rather than a finished one. The first release Matz numbered 1.0 followed a year later, on Christmas Day 1996 (Ruby 1.0).
Related: Ruby was named before it existed · Ruby 1.0 · Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto
Sources
Sources
- Ruby history chronology (release log, entry for 1995-12-21, “ruby 0.95 distributed on fj.sources”): https://github.com/takahashim/ruby-history
- Ruby (programming language), Wikipedia (first public release of Ruby 0.95 announced on Japanese domestic newsgroups on 21 December 1995): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)