David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

So these guys were using Ruby to describe the concepts.

And first of all, I would read these articles for just the concepts they were explaining.

And I'd be like, what is this programming language?

I mean, I like the concept you're explaining, but I also want to see the programming language.

Why haven't I heard of this?

So I started looking into Ruby.

And I realized...

At that time, Ruby might not be known by anyone, but it's actually been around for a long time.

Mats, the Japanese creator of Ruby, had started working on Ruby back in 93, before the internet was even a thing.

And here I am in 2003, 10 years later, picking up what seems like this hidden gem that's just laying in obscurity in plain sight.

But Dave Thomas and Martin Fowler, I think...

successfully put me and a handful of other people on the trail of a programming language that hadn't been used much in the West, but could be.

So I picked up Ruby and I thought, this is very different.

First of all, where are all the semicolons?

I'd been programming in PHP and ASP.

I'd even done some Pascal.

I'd looked at some C. There are semicolons everywhere.

And that was the first thing that struck me is where are the damn semicolons?

And I started thinking, actually, why do we have semicolons in programming?

They're to tell the interpreter that there's a new line of instructions, but I don't need them as a human.