Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku • Hacker News Board

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#21

Post by petenixey » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

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.

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#22

Post by beaumartinez » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #20

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.)

Doesn'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

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#23

Post by beaumartinez » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #13

davidw wrote: post #7

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…

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

Like the Python Software Foundation?

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#24

Post by davidw » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

truncs wrote: post #19

davidw wrote: post #7

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…

He did receive stock options from them

Oh yes, he received oodles of options and all kinds of perks. However, he never went to work for any of them, despite all the plying and feting.

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#25

Post by davidw » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:21 PM UTC

beaumartinez wrote: post #22

wheels wrote: post #20

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.)

Doesn'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

It'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'.

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#26

Post by judofyr » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:51 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #13

davidw wrote: post #7

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…

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

Ruby Central? http://rubycentral.org/

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#27

Post by trevorhartman » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:52 PM UTC

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

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#28

Post by Estragon » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:54 PM UTC

beaumartinez wrote: post #22

wheels wrote: post #20

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.)

Doesn'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

I 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."

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#29

Post by davidw » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:56 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #13

davidw wrote: post #7

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…

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

One 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.

Re: Matz (creator of Ruby) joins Heroku

#30

Post by wheels » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 9:57 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #20

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.)

Hmm, hate to knock the steam out of my own post, but it seems Lerdorf was only at WePay for one year and left in April:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rlerdorf