# Ruby 1.8

> The long-lived, steady Ruby that carried the language through the early Rails years.

- August 4, 2003: Ruby 1.8.0 released

Ruby **1.8.0** was released on **August 4, 2003**. The 1.8 series turned out to be unusually long-lived: it stayed stable for years and was not officially retired until June 2013.

That longevity mattered because of timing. Ruby 1.8 was the version in wide use when Ruby suddenly reached a much larger audience through Rails, the web framework [David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/dhh.md) extracted from the Basecamp app and released in 2004 ([Rails was pulled out of Basecamp](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/rails-from-basecamp.md)). For a whole generation of newcomers arriving by way of Rails, "Ruby" effectively meant Ruby 1.8. It sat squarely between the first public releases ([Ruby 1.0](https://chunkybacon.dev/timeline/ruby-1-0.md)) and the modernization that came next.

*Related:* [Ruby 1.0](https://chunkybacon.dev/timeline/ruby-1-0.md) · [Rails was pulled out of Basecamp](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/rails-from-basecamp.md) · [David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/dhh.md)

## Sources
- Ruby 1.8.0 Released (official announcement, ruby-lang.org, 4 Aug 2003): https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2003/08/04/ruby-180-released/
- Ruby (programming language), Wikipedia (Ruby 1.8 initially released August 2003, stable for a long time, retired June 2013): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)

---

Source: https://chunkybacon.dev/timeline/ruby-1-8/
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)