This year we were joined by two special guests at Rails World: Akira Matsuda and Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto.

Each was awarded a 2024 Rails Luminary award to acknowledge and celebrate the significant mark they have each made on the Rails ecosystems, shaping the tools we use and the community around them.

Rails Lifetime Award 2024: Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto

For the Rails Lifetime Award, DHH bestowed this year’s honor on none other than the creator of Ruby himself, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Matz’s vision of a programming language that is both powerful and enjoyable has us all to where we are today. His kindness, passion for Ruby, and impact on software development have inspired generations of developers.

Without Ruby, there would be no Rails. Without Matz, there would be no Ruby. Therefore, without Matz there would be no Rails.

DHH, Rails Core

Rails Luminary Award 2024: Akira Matsuda

Akira Matsuda, the recipient of the 2024 Rails Luminary Award, has been a Rails committer for over 16 years, contributing more than 1,100 commits in that time.

His work spans critical areas like Ruby compatibility and Active Record improvements, alongside creating widely-used gems like kaminari, active_decorator, routes_lazy_routes, traceroute, and html5_validators. His influence extends far beyond code, too. Akira is a key organizer in the global Ruby community, notably as the driving force behind RubyKaigi and Asakusa.rb.

Akira is a Rails committer, a Ruby committer, and has contributed to their ecosystems steadily for so long! We can see the breadth of his OSS work in many places: contributions to the framework, gems that we use, documentation, conferences, and more. He is the perfect person to win this year’s award.

Xavier Noria, Rails Core

Both Akira and Matz represent the best of what it means to be a Rails Luminary: a passion for open source, prolific work on the code we use every day, and an unwavering dedication to inspiring others and helping them succeed.

Watch an interview with both award winners here:

Thank you and congratulations to both!