African Herbman

Realist_UnapologeticallyIgbo_SoftwareDeveloper_Entrepreneurship_Enthusiast.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Japanese programmer looked at every existing programming language in 1993, decided none of them made him happy, and spent two years building his own the language he built became the foundation GitHub, Shopify, Airbnb, and Coinbase were all built on.

His name is Yukihiro Matsumoto.

Everyone in the programming world calls him Matz. He was born in 1965, studied information science at the University of Tsukuba, and graduated in 1990 with a head full of ideas about what programming languages could be and a quiet frustration with what they actually were.

He knew Perl. He did not like it. He said it had the smell of a toy language. He knew Python. He did not like it either, because he felt its object-oriented features were add-ons bolted onto a language that was not designed around them from the start. He wanted something that was genuinely, completely object-oriented, easy to use, and built for the person writing the code rather than the machine running it.

He looked for that language. He could not find it.

So on February 24, 1993, he opened a chat window with his colleague Keiju Ishitsuka and typed: "Let us decide the codename now."

They wanted to name it after a gemstone, inspired by Perl. Ishitsuka suggested Coral. Matsumoto suggested Ruby. Ruby was shorter by one letter. Ruby won.

He spent the next two years building it alone, working through the architecture piece by piece. The object system. The string class. The IO streams. He later said he talked through specific features while speaking to his baby daughter, using her as a sounding board the way programmers use rubber ducks. In August 1993, he finally wrote the line of code that produced "Hello, world." on the screen.

The first public version, Ruby 0.95, was released to Japanese domestic newsgroups on December 21, 1995. No press release. No launch event. Just a quiet post to a mailing list.

The design principle underneath everything was the one nobody else had ever made primary. Matsumoto called it programmer happiness. He believed programming languages should be built for the joy and productivity of the person writing the code, not optimized purely for machine efficiency. Every decision in Ruby's design ran through that filter. If it made the programmer's life harder, it was wrong.

That philosophy attracted a small but devoted following in Japan through the late 1990s. Then in 2003, a Danish programmer named David Heinemeier Hansson discovered Ruby and used it to build an internal project management tool for his company. He called the tool Basecamp. He extracted the framework underneath it and released it publicly in 2004.

He called it Ruby on Rails.

Within a year of that release, the framework had changed how web applications were built. Rails introduced the principle of convention over configuration, meaning developers could make decisions about structure quickly because the framework had already made sensible defaults. What used to take weeks of setup took days. What used to take days took hours.

Shopify started on Rails in 2005. GitHub built on Rails a couple of years later. Airbnb, Twitch, Coinbase, SoundCloud, and Zendesk all followed. The first generation of consumer internet companies that defined how people think about software products were largely built by small teams moving fast on a framework that traced directly back to one Japanese programmer who was dissatisfied with his tools in 1993.

Shopify now processes over $200 billion in annual commerce volume. It still runs on Rails. GitHub became the largest code hosting platform on earth and was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2018. It started on Rails.

Matsumoto has said many times that he created Ruby for selfish reasons. He was so underwhelmed by every available option that he built something that would make himself happy. The programmer happiness he was chasing was his own.

The community that grew around Ruby adopted a motto that says everything about who he is. Matz is nice and so we are nice. They abbreviated it MINASWAN. It spread because it was true. He answered emails from strangers. He engaged with the community with patience. He treated the language as a gift, not a product.

He is still the chief designer of Ruby today. The language is 31 years old. It is still being improved.

The last stable release was Ruby 4.0.4, shipped on May 11, 2026.

One programmer, unhappy with his tools, built something better in the evenings in 1993. The companies you use to buy things, to store code, to book travel, and to watch streams were built on top of what he made.

He just wanted to be happy while he worked.

Did you know Ruby was behind the tools you use every day?

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

-Squatters took over his mom's house
-Didn't know how to get them out and discovered how difficult the legal process can be for homeowners
-Found a legal workaround where he could move into the house himself and essentially become the squatter's new roommate
-Realized this was a much bigger problem than most people knew
-Started making videos helping homeowners get their properties back
-Went viral
-Now has a reality TV show where he travels the country out-squatting squatters

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

We have 20,078 students registered for the 2027 South East Maths Olympiad:

Boys - 9,718
Girls - 10,360

IMO State registration is leading, while Anambra is far behind.

We will close registration once we hit 40,000 students to enable us to plan properly ahead of time.

We are raising a generation of scientists, inventors, and change-makers.

[JT Khalid 💸 @stfukhaleeed]

Na why i dey always run if i dey cross road be this

[African Herbman @Nexta_Flames]

@asemota Get well soon, big Chief.

[Morris Monye @Morris_Monye]

Lack of money is so limiting.

God will help everyone.

[oseni rufai @ruffydfire]

PMS ₦1400, Kerosene ₦4k, Gas ₦2000, Cement ₦12k. inflation 19%, No Security, No Light, No Money.

[Akwa Ibom 1st Son @ukocarter]

Igbos are the pioneers of affiliate marketing. 😂😂😂😂

[Dele Farotimi. A victim of Nigeria @DeleFarotimi]

IF knowledge is your purpose, IF you are truly interested in learning about the Islamist roots of our problems, why and how Britain assured the retardation of Nigeria, find this book, read it, and you will begin to understand where and when the rain began to beat us..🤔

[IGBO History & Facts @IgboHistoFacts]

Asaba–Onitsha River Crossing, 1959

[Sir Dickson @Wizarab10]

On my flight this morning, an older man greeted me with "The best of men." I smiled and greeted him, and we shook hands. It turned out we were seat mates.

We gisted throughout the flight. When we landed, I asked his origin and he said Delta. I asked his village and he mentioned my mom's village. I told him I was from there. He asked my maiden name and I told him. His eyes lit up in familiarity. I asked his family name and he told me. I told him my mom would know his family because they all know themselves. I called my mom and told her somebody wanted to greet her. It didn't take her 2 mins to identify his family.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I've been gisting with my second cousin all through the flight. My mom and his mom are first cousins. We've exchanged contact. I'll go and block him at his office next week. Life 😊

[Planet Of Memes @PlanetOfMemes]

I've been using baby gates wrong my entire life.

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

I am beginning to see that we can't coexist forever as one nation. Some hard choices have to be made. Also, God punish Fred Lugard’s soul in Hell.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

Good news: Uchegbu Kosischukwu won the gold medal in the senior category at the German Mathematics Olympiad in Frankfurt, Germany.

She competed against students from schools across Germany and also from 52 other countries.

She currently attends Ambassador College, Ota.

What a star!

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

Today, we concluded another partnership with Sterling Bank to launch the Sterling Bank National Mathematics Quiz. A nationwide competition designed to discover, reward, and celebrate Nigeria’s brightest young minds.

Starting Saturday, June 20, 2026, students from Primary 1 to SS3 across Nigeria will compete online every two weeks for the prizes.

1st Prize – ₦500,000

2nd Prize – ₦300,000

3rd Prize – ₦200,000

That’s ₦1,000,000 every two weeks and ₦24,000,000 every year dedicated solely to rewarding academic excellence among Nigerian children.

But this is not just about winning money.

It is about building a culture where intelligence is celebrated.

It is about giving every child, whether in Lagos, Enugu, Kano, Bayelsa, Maiduguri, Aba, or a remote village, an opportunity to compete on a national stage.

Competition Schedule

• Every two weeks

• Saturdays

• 6:00 PM – 6:20 PM

• Online nationwide

The top performers will then advance to a live championship session streamed online next day same time, where Nigerians can watch some of the country’s brightest students solve challenging mathematical problems in real time.

To ensure fairness and give more students the opportunity to benefit, every student can only win once.

And here’s what makes it even better:

Every participant will be able to review their questions after the competition, identify their weaknesses, learn from their mistakes, and prepare for the next challenge.

This means that even students who don’t win become better mathematicians.

Parents, teachers, school owners, and students should begin preparing immediately.

The questions will be tough and the competition will be fierce.

Registration is now open:

https://t.co/5dGxuzgLU1

Please share this with every child, parent, teacher, school owner, principal, and education stakeholder you know.

Let’s make academic excellence prestigious again.

[Ja Leto @_falsi1ke]

“Never play fair in a game where others cheat.”

— Machiavelli

[Paul Graham @paulg]

You are far more dangerous to your startup than competitors are. A hundred times more startups die from poor execution by their founders than are killed by competitors.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“One of the most underrated skills you can learn is the ability to ignore your mood and stick with the plan.”

[-valar morghulis- @eldivine]

Lmao I’ve been saying this for a long time now. Glad everybody is catching up.

You have to run to US to save money. Upside down situation.

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

Just as I was about to shut down all @calendly appointments for a while (for health reasons), I got this email. The founder agreed that I should share it, as he was already going to do a post on it.

I love the part where his client gave him a furnished office. No better PMF.