Science Quote by Yukihiro Matsumoto

Matsumoto’s line is a quiet rebuke to the fantasy that programming languages are neutral tools engineered toward a single, objective “best.” He frames design as taste with consequences: a language is a set of trade-offs disguised as syntax, and the deciding factor is often whose discomfort gets prioritized. By saying he made Ruby “perfect for me,” he’s not confessing selfishness so much as puncturing the performative humility common in tech discourse. Every language already reflects a person (or committee) with a worldview; Ruby just admits the author is in the room.

The subtext is also a defense against the most predictable criticism developers hurl at languages: why isn’t it more like the one I already know? Matsumoto flips that entitlement back onto the user. Your friction isn’t necessarily a flaw; it might be the point. Ruby’s “developer happiness” ethos, its embrace of expressiveness and readable code, makes sense when you understand it as a counterproposal to languages that optimize for machines, formalism, or large-scale governance.

Naming Guido and Python is the shrewdest move. It disarms tribalism by granting legitimacy to a rival philosophy: Python’s “one obvious way to do it” versus Ruby’s permissive, flexible style. Matsumoto isn’t picking a winner; he’s telling you to stop expecting one. The context is early-2000s language evangelism, when communities treated syntax like identity. His message lands because it’s both principled and practical: choose the tool that matches your values, then own the fact that those values are not universal.