
Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku - jamesheroku
http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/7/12/matz_joins_heroku/
======
davidw
Wow, nice move, guys!

One of the things I always admired about Linus is that he managed to stay
_very_ neutral amongst all the Linux vendors. Back in the dot com days, he
could have had pretty much anything he wanted from Redhat, VA Linux,
Linuxcare, etc... etc.... but he managed to stay with Transmeta, and then go
to the Linux Foundation, which is neutral territory. That's allowed him to
focus on Linux without having a Corporate Overlord, benign though it may be.

~~~
jshen
I've always dreamed of a world with more things like the Linux Foundation. I'd
love to see a Ruby foundation or something like that

~~~
judofyr
Ruby Central? <http://rubycentral.org/>

~~~
jshen
Wow, why didn't I know about that already! Anyone know if they have plans to
fund developers?

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wheels
Interesting note:

With Rasmus Lerdorf working at WePay, this means the creators of the two most
presently popular web programming languages, Ruby and PHP, are now working for
YC companies.

(Which is a teency stretch since Heroku is now SalesForce and hence no longer
really a YC company, but we'll count them to keep it interesting.)

~~~
spooneybarger
I'd love to know how Ruby is one of the two most popular web programming
languages. I love ruby but from what I see here in NYC, I'd say python is more
popular. Are we trading anecdotes here? Or is that two most popular based on a
metric from somewhere?

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rat
Based on anecdotal evidence it seems like python is generally much more
popular then ruby, being frequently used for just about any general purpose
programming (other then some speed sensitive and low level stuff) such as os
scripting, application scripting, web programming, number crunching, desktop
applications, ect.

While ruby(usually rails) is unfortunately only popular for web programming
(probably because python is a very similar language that out-competes it,
partially due to specialized libraries and more stable interfaces) where it
seems to be more popular then python.

~~~
mitchty
I'll throw in my anecdotal evidence as well then. At work use ruby for a lot
of configuration management with puppet mainly due to it just being easier to
just throw some extra ruby in place than shell out to another script. So ever
so slowly we have been getting more and more ruby into our "enterprise".

We also have another more "corporate" type piece of software that uses python
that gets... less use, but that is more due to it really being written in java
and having performance closer to a glacier. Which is why we have puppet now in
the first place.

I've used both ruby and perl for equal amounts of time, and I've recently
started to use it at work to replace old perl and shell I have. That and I've
switched vm's to rubinius so those old "ruby is slow" gripes to be honest
never cause problems. That and having a jit+vm that isn't java on each of our
os's is really awesome.

Don't get me wrong, Python is a great language but you are 100% right, there
isn't much need for learning both Ruby and Python. They both are roughly
equivalent featurewise, but they both take _completely_ different roads about
how you approach general purpose programming. That said I know both but rarely
use my Python knowledge much. But it does have some great libraries out there
for numeric computation/etc... I also know of a few companies that use ruby as
their goto language to get failing (java) projects out of the door.

Disclaimer: I never use rails at all, haven't since I looked at it source in
the 1.x days. Was REALLY put off with all of the monkey patching they did.

~~~
rat
Doh I forgot to mention puppet.

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adelevie
I remember when RubyGems got forked as SlimGems, there was a discussion about
Rails' importance in the overall Ruby community. patio11 wrote:

 _I use Rails, and love Rails, but back home Rails is not yet the core Ruby
use case, not by a long shot. Rails has peculiar needs with regards to typical
Ruby applications, and a certain portion of the developer community feels that
people who write themselves peculiar needs can write their own solutions to
them._ [1]

With Matz working on the most Rails-oriented hosting platform, perhaps this
will change.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2621376>

~~~
riffraff
I don't think matz was ever unaware of how important rails is. But what I
assume patio11 meant is that most of the japanese devs may not have that as a
priority, changing the priorities of a single person would not change much.

~~~
masklinn
Although it's a pretty important single person, and may bring much greater
awareness of the "westerner" ruby community among core developers.

~~~
Volpe
Yeah because Matz never really left japan, or spoke to "westerner" developers
before. So this will be a HUGE change... seriously?

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petenixey
This is really great to see. It's so seldom that a company goes from strength
to strength post acquisition. With notable exceptions like Android, companies
at best hold their trajectory while most disintegrate.

Heroku just keeps getting better though. The releases of things like Cedar and
node support are a huge indication of the platform's forward momentum and this
news is quite the coup d'etat. Kudos to the Heroku team and Kudos to
Salesforce for an acquisition gone right.

~~~
bradendouglass
Completely agree with this. So many mid sized (read::fairly cool) startups are
being swallowed by large companies these days, just to be salvo-ed in a
basement and eventually lost.

I figured Heroku would have had the same fate, glad they are (without a doubt)
blazing on.

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zachinglis
Wow.

I like the idea of Heroku going the same way as EngineYard. And investing in
technology.

But dreww is correct, he's keeping his other positions so is this merely a
marketing and bragging rights thing?

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telemachos
'Marketing and bragging rights' sounds critical to me. In an interview[1][2],
Matz describes it this way:

>> He [Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce] said he could provide us some support
and that's why I decided to join Salesforce.com through Heroku (Note: Several
members of Ruby Core are currently under negotiation to join Heroku).

>> So, the core of our work will not change. Our mission is to develop Ruby
Core, to make Ruby more functional and higher quality. Having said that, I am
expecting that the job security we are being provided and Ruby usage feedback
we get from heavy Ruby users such as Heroku will accelerate the progress of
Ruby development. Otherwise, there would be no point to accepting the offer.

The "support" there refers to a conversation between Benioff and Matz where
Matz said a primary concern of his was for Ruby devs who either work on Ruby
in their spare time or worry about job security. It sounds like Salesforce is
committed to helping by hiring multiple Ruby-core devs. I think that's very
real support, not just PR of any kind.

[1] [http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2011/7/12/translation-of-
matz-q...](http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2011/7/12/translation-of-matz-q-a-
article-after-joining-heroku)

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757134> (HN thread on the Matz
interview (so far, no comments)

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sanderjd
This is totally awesome, and is a huge boon for both Heroku and Ruby, but I'd
much prefer to see them hire Rich Hickey or Guido van Rossum or Martin Odersky
or ...well, the list goes on. Heroku is already knows Ruby cold, they should
be on-boarding the people that can help them bring their A-game to other
platforms. I look forward to a world where I can ask myself the question
"which platform is quickest to get up and running on" and have the answer be a
list with 10 entries. Lots of people are trying this, but Heroku has the
experience to make it work.

~~~
nagnatron
Well they have the Ring dude for clojure so...

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riprock
I wonder how his Rite project is going (Ruby Lite, an "embeddable Ruby")
Wasn't the project sponsored by the Japanese government? Really looking
forward to its release :)

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skarayan
Very cool. I wonder what Matz will work on directly for Heroku. I understand
that he will continue to work on the language, but what new things can we
expect to see from Heroku as a platform?

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nanoanderson
> what new things can we expect to see from Heroku as a platform?

I think his presence there will serve two purposes: 1) share his Ruby cachet
with Heroku, and 2) when Heroku finds a way to improve Ruby, they have a way
to fast-track it now, big time.

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sgrove
Congrats to Heroku - it's certainly a fitting parternship! I wouldn't put
anything past them. With such an amazing team and insatiable ambition, they're
going to be leaving a mark on history.

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clutchski
It's very interesting that the creators of Python and Ruby are working on PaaS
hosting solutions for their languages: Guido at Google App Engine and Matz at
Heroku.

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cantbecool
Now we only need to know where _why is working.

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dschobel
I can't imagine he's actually going to hack on the product, right? Is
something like this a prestige move?

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selvan
My ex-employer (a tech consulting company) tried to on-board him & I am
assuming that Matz certainly have received offers from many other tech
companies too.. Kudos to heroku for making offer that excited Matz.., it is an
interesting move by Heroku..

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diego
Congrats James. Leave some Ruby luminaries for other companies :)

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freddealmeida
Matz was rather excited to get the Heroku t-shirts last week. This is a few
days before the RubyKaigi so the timing is indicative. I think Heroku wants
some expansion in the Japanese Ruby market. (which is sadly still under-
developed)

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cdcarter
Heroku is nice so we are nice?

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trevorhartman
This has to be the most badass new hire announcement I've ever seen.

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niravshah
That must have been a tough interview...

~~~
bgentry
"So, can you estimate the number of gas stations in Los Angeles?"

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keke_ta
Great move! Congrats to Heroku.

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adebelov
congrats to Jamie and team!

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dreww
interestingly, the official press release mentions that matz will retain his
positions at NaCL and Rakuten Institute of Technology.

[http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/ruby-creator-
yukihiro-m...](http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/ruby-creator-yukihiro-
matsumoto-joins-heroku-)

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nanoanderson
So Heroku now owns Ruby.

Not that I think this will lead anywhere particularly bad.

~~~
psykotic
Did Google start owning Python when Guido went to work there? Replace Google
by Transmeta and Guido by Linus and you have another earlier example. This
kind of thing happens all the time. You can generally count on long-time
system designers and implementors to have enough integrity and pride in their
creation that they won't succumb to corporate agendas even from their own
employers. It's not like they're so desperate they have to suck corporate cock
to hang onto a job.

~~~
itsnotvalid
It is yet to see another cloud based solution for python. Of course, having
Guido there is not the _real_ reason why this would happen.

