Chikahiro: Was the first Ruby conference in America or somewhere like that? Matz: That's right. Matz: The first Ruby conference was held in America in November 2001. Chikahiro: At that time, were you the only Japanese person who went, Matz? Matz: There were about two other Japanese people who came, and I thought that was amazing. Chikahiro: Were they committers or something? Matz: At that time, the concept of a "committer" wasn't really there, so they were more like acquaintances within the community. Chikahiro: Like, "If Matz is going, we'll go too." Matz: Yes, they said, "We'll go," so there were about three Japanese people. Matz: You know, the first Ruby conference only had about 36 attendees. Compared to today's conferences with hundreds of people, it felt like it could blow away with a puff of wind. Among them, there were three Japanese people, very modestly. Dave Thomas , who is here today, was also there. Chikahiro: Oh, already! That was early. Matz: Um, so Dave Thomas published a book called Programming Ruby in 2000. Matz: So, when people who learned about Ruby from reading that book decided to get together, um, ACM, the American computer society, they booked a hotel conference room right before their main conference and decided to hold it there. That was the first Ruby conference. Matz: So, most of the people were attendees of the ACM's OOPSLA conference, which deals with object-oriented programming. They arrived a few days early and attended the Ruby conference as a side thing, that's the kind of crowd it was. Matz: And at that conference, someone said, "We need a package system for Ruby, right?" and they were making a prototype for RubyGems. Chikahiro: Was it created at that time? Matz: At that time. It was made for, or thanks to, the conference. Chikahiro: Wow. I see, it didn't exist until then. For Perl, it's CPAN, right? Matz: Perl had CPAN and such, yes. Matz: Ruby didn't have something like that yet, back in 2001. And people were saying, "We need som...
First seen: 2026-01-02 09:14
Last seen: 2026-01-02 20:15