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Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku
- dreww 15y agointerestingly, 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-matsumoto-joins-heroku- http://news.heroku.com/news_releases/ruby-creator-yukihiro-m...
- diego 15y agoCongrats James. Leave some Ruby luminaries for other companies :)
- sgrove 15y agoCongrats 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.
- skarayan 15y agoVery 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?
- nanoanderson 15y ago> 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.
- minikomi 15y agoIt seems it's more about giving focus to the ruby dev effort, and (paraphrasing from Matz) getting feedback from Heroku as to how ruby can be adapted to fit more comfortably in a cloud computing environment.
- zachinglis 15y agoWow. 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?
- d0m 15y ago"Bragging" might be a bit hard; I'd say they're happy/honored to give back to an awesome community.
- telemachos 15y ago'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-a-article-after-joining-heroku http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2011/7/12/translation-of-matz-q... [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757134 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757134 (HN thread on the Matz interview (so far, no comments)
- davidw 15y agoWow, 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.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jshen 15y agoI'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
- allantyoung 15y agoBe the change you'd like to see.
- beaumartinez 15y agoLike the Python Software Foundation?
- judofyr 15y agoRuby Central? http://rubycentral.org/ http://rubycentral.org/
- jshen 15y agoWow, why didn't I know about that already! Anyone know if they have plans to fund developers?
- davidw 15y agoOne of the problems with open source software is that it can be very difficult to capture some of the value that people get from it, and cycle it back to the creators/workers of some project. Except, of course, for code contributions, but you can't pay the rent with those.
- cdcarter 15y agoHeroku is nice so we are nice?
- adebelov 15y agocongrats to Jamie and team!
- nanoanderson 15y agoSo Heroku now owns Ruby. Not that I think this will lead anywhere particularly bad.
- dmazin 15y agoIt really doesn't. It can't change Ruby in a major way, can't charge for it, can't close-source it, etc. even if it's paying the creator.
- kidmenot 15y ago> So Heroku now owns Ruby. Nah, I don't think so. Ruby is a community effort. Should Matz ever turn into an asshole (which just seems hiiiighly unlikely), someone else would fork the project.
- bradendouglass 15y agoMatz created...and to what I understand still develops MRI (Matz Ruby Interpreter). Rubinius and jRuby are coming on strong from the Engine Yard team.
- rat 15y agoHe probably has more influence on the language then the guys in charge of Rubinius and JRuby(across implementations).
- psykotic 15y agoDid 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 15y agoIt is yet to see another cloud based solution for python. Of course, having Guido there is not the _real_ reason why this would happen.
- adelevie 15y agoI 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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2621376
- riffraff 15y agoI 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.
- wheels 15y agoInteresting 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.)
- beaumartinez 15y agoDoesn't Rasmus Lerdorf "hate" programming, though?[1] I don't think he's on the same "level" as Matz regarding their languages and the passion behind them because of this. "There are people who actually like programming. I don't understand why they like programming." [1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf
- davidw 15y agoIt's a bit of hyperbole on his part, but yeah, I think he likes seeing how something ought to be done, and doesn't enjoy sitting down and actually pecking at the keys to make it happen. I can understand that. Speaking of dot coms and Linuxcare and such, much as I don't care for working with PHP, Rasmus is a really smart, friendly and nice guy who is well worth talking with even if his language is not 'hip'.
- Estragon 15y agoI totally lack context, here, but when I saw that quote, my first thought was, "With the tastes you showed in creating PHP, it's no wonder you hate programming."
- drieddust 15y agoIt is very easy to bash him but he must have done something right and he deserves the credit for it.
- lanstein 15y ago"I don't like writing, I like having written." - Ernest Hemingway
- petenixey 15y agoThis 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 15y agoCompletely 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.
- trevorhartman 15y agoThis has to be the most badass new hire announcement I've ever seen.
- riprock 15y agoI 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 :)
- freddealmeida 15y agoMatz 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)
- sanderjd 15y agoThis 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 15y agoWell they have the Ring dude for clojure so...
- niravshah 15y agoThat must have been a tough interview...
- bgentry 15y ago"So, can you estimate the number of gas stations in Los Angeles?"
- dschobel 15y agoI can't imagine he's actually going to hack on the product, right? Is something like this a prestige move?
- clutchski 15y agoIt'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.
- selvan 15y agoMy 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..
- cantbecool 15y agoNow we only need to know where _why is working.
- keke_ta 15y agoGreat move! Congrats to Heroku.