Wondering why Ruby is so popular? Its fans call it a beautiful, artful language. And yet, they say it's handy and practical. What gives? Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.