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Yukihiro Matsumoto

b. 1965

Japanese computer scientist who created the Ruby programming language

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About Yukihiro Matsumoto

Born 1965. Yukihiro Matsumoto is a Japanese computer scientist, engineer and programmer, known for Ruby (programming language).

, also known as Matz, is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer. He is best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI).

, Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of the Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organization within Rakuten Group, Inc. He was appointed to the role of technical advisor for VASILY, Inc. starting in June 2014.

Early life Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, he was raised in Tottori from the age of four. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school. He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba where he was a member of Ikuo Nakata's research lab on programming languages and compilers.

Work He works for the Japanese open source company Netlab.jp. Matsumoto is known as one of the open-source evangelists in Japan. He has released several open source products, including cmail, the Emacs-based mail user agent, written entirely in Emacs Lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that became known outside Japan.

Ruby Matsumoto released the first version of the Ruby programming language on 21 December 1995. He still leads the development of the language's reference implementation, MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter).

mruby In April 2012, Matsumoto open sourced his work on a new implementation of Ruby called mruby. It is a minimal implementation based on his virtual machine, ritevm, and is designed to allow software developers to embed Ruby in other programs while keeping memory footprint small and performance optimized.

streem In December 2014, Matsumoto open sourced his work on a new scripting language called streem, a concurrent language based on a programming model similar to shell, with influences from Ruby, Erlang, and other functional programming languages.

Treasure Data Matsumoto has been listed as an investor for Treasure Data; many of the company's programs such as Fluentd use Ruby as their primary language.

Recognition Matsumoto received the 2011 Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) at the 2012 LibrePlanet conference at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Boston.

Personal life Matsumoto is married and has four children. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having performed standard missionary service, he currently serves as a counselor in the bishopric of his church's ward.

Written works γ‚ͺγƒ–γ‚Έγ‚§γ‚―γƒˆζŒ‡ε‘γ‚Ήγ‚―γƒͺγƒ—γƒˆθ¨€θͺž Ruby Ruby in a Nutshell The Ruby Programming Language

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Important facts

Birth century
Nationality
Known for
Ruby (programming language)
Education
University of Tsukuba, Shimane University
Employers
Heroku
Awards
FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software
Also known as
Matz, Matsumoto Yukihiro, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto

People in Yukihiro Matsumoto's life

Named in this biography and alive at the same time

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Yukihiro Matsumoto's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Yukihiro Matsumoto?

Japanese computer scientist who created the Ruby programming language

When was Yukihiro Matsumoto born?

Yukihiro Matsumoto was born on 14 April 1965 in Osaka Prefecture.

What is Yukihiro Matsumoto's occupation?

Yukihiro Matsumoto is a computer scientist, engineer and programmer.

What is Yukihiro Matsumoto known for?

Yukihiro Matsumoto is known for Ruby (programming language).

What nationality is Yukihiro Matsumoto?

Yukihiro Matsumoto is Japanese.

Sources & further reading

Β· Wikipedia: Yukihiro Matsumoto

Β· Wikidata: Q92748

Β· DBpedia: Yukihiro Matsumoto

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Yukihiro Matsumoto. https://biography.guide/yukihiro-matsumoto/

MLA: "Yukihiro Matsumoto." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/yukihiro-matsumoto/.

Chicago: "Yukihiro Matsumoto." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/yukihiro-matsumoto/.

Data last updated: 2026-09-22 Β· Spot an error? Report a correction.

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