Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto

I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language.

Matz is a Japanese computer programmer and the creator of Ruby. He released Ruby in December of 1995 as a productive language that was still fun to use, empahsizing the feeling of the language rather than striving for language perfection. Ruby is said to follow the principle of least astonishment, meaning that the language should behave in such a way as to minimize confusion for experienced users (at least if the user is Matz). Now working as the chief architect of Heroku, he is currently developing a new open-source lightweight Ruby project called mruby.

The Ruby community lives by the mantra: “Matz is nice, so we are nice”.

_why the lucky stiff

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.

Although he committed infocide on August 19, 2009, _why is still one of the most influential Ruby programmers to date. He is best known for Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby, Hackety Hack, and the Try Ruby interactive programming tutorial. He has also contributed several libraries and applications to the coder community. His love of programming and language speak to even new programmers, as illustrated by Annie Lowrey’s March 2012 Slate Magazine article “Where’s _why?”.

David Heinemeier Hansson

Flexibility is not free. It’s overrated. And if you trade that flexibility in for some constraints, you get a lot of complexity removed from the equation, you get a lot of productivity back from all the stuff you don’t have to do.

Hansson is a Danish programmer who created Ruby on Rails, a web framework that is optimized for programmer productivity. It abstracts away a lot of code processes, leading some to criticize the “magic” of rails. However, Rails allows programmers a high level of productivity faster with a less painful learning curve than other languages. Hansson is also a professional race car driver.

Avi Flombaum

There’s a joy to programming. That’s the reason why we’re here…to experience the act of falling in love with programming.

Avi is our fearless leader at the Flatiron School in New York City. A programmer since the internet was born, Avi brings a love of code and a passion for teaching to the school. Imminently quotable, Avi also organizes one of the largest Rails meetups in the world, NYC on Rails.