The 20 Year Ruby

A few months ago, I had an idea. What if, for the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the public release of the Ruby programming language, that we could do something nice for Matz, its creator?

I've used Ruby for most of my career as a software developer, and I think it's fair to say I owe Matz for much of my success. Certainly of my day-to-day happiness at work.

I'm also a gemcutter -- as in, I actually cut real, physical gemstones (I'm a member of the Columbia-Willamette Faceters Guild and the U.S. Faceter's Guild). It's a crazy, strange hobby, but one that I love. It's another craft, another art, and in this case, it afforded me a wonderful opportunity to give back.

What if I could cut a real ruby for the creator of Ruby?

So I did, and on November 17th, 2015, at RubyConf, it was presented. Here are some pictures of the process and final product.

(Many thanks to Evan Phoenix of RubyCentral for his support, and to Arya Akhavan, whose design I adapted for this stone.)