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_why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

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Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#101

Post by silentOpen »

Jun8 wrote: post #94

Being a non-creator, the quote at the end of the article has hit me so hard, I cannot get it off my head for hours now: "When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create." As for the programming is a science or art debate: It is' of course wrong to make such a dichotomy. People who draw a thick boundary between these two, I thin…

Amazing quotation.

Like you say, art vs. science is a false dichotomy. Programming seems like both because it is about design -- the intentional and intense, the passionate blending of art and science.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#102

Post by silentbicycle »

jgg wrote: post #77
antirez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming as science: not consistent with reality IMHO. My argument is that it's pretty simple to build a good computer scientist: take a guy with good IQ and put it into a good university. But there are zero guarantees that you'll end with a good coder also, as coding is a matter of taste, tradeoffs, design decisions, creativity, ability to think out of the box, and so forth. The problem is that most of our indust…

(Note that this response isn't an attack on you specifically, it's just my feelings towards this argument in general) Where is the magical divide between "art" and "science" in the field? Do the adherents of either side even know what they're defending? If I know what a finite state machine is and how to apply it, does that make me "scientific"? If I hack together a web application in Scheme, instead of some Mathemag…

> If I hack together a web application in Scheme, instead of some Mathemagical, Dijkstra-approved language, does that make me an "artist"?

Dijkstra would not have liked this.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#103

Post by X-Istence »

igravious wrote: post #36
gdp wrote: post #16

Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality. As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal. The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to soft…

Yo. I would suggest that as an admitted non-fan of Ruby then you are in no position to comment. Besides, _why could draw, anyone could appreciate his stuff I'd imagine. He could play music. He had a quirky sense of humour, and was a creative and endlessly surprising person. Now, this ain't sycophantic as you call, he genuinely was these things. Sorry if that bothers you. There's this cute paper some guy once wrote, i…

Why are people who are not fans of Ruby not allowed to comment on how _why, arguably someone that made an impression in the programming world, has influenced their little corner of the world?

_why has done absolutely nothing for me either, I cannot stand Ruby, and its community, I don't understand why all the reverence for this single man. Yes, I know of _why's work, and yes seeing other people use his old nickname makes me feel sad since they won't ever really appreciate the ideas, and projects he put out into the world, but why are we still writing about him?

There are many other people that have contributed greatly to advancing of computer science as a whole that contributed to more than just one programming language that have changed the field of computer science as it was once known. Those people are the people we should be writing about, not someone who like a coward decided to up and quit.

_why reminds me of my younger brother, and even partly of myself back when I was a kid, if monopoly or some other board game was not going my way, the board would go flying and so would all the pieces, and it would no longer exists. _why removing all of his content, not passing it along to the next group of people, not even leaving a backup in place thereby causing others to scramble to find the latest up-to-date versions from local disks is very much like that game of monopoly where I am losing, and it is a cowards move.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#104

Post by bguthrie »

gdp wrote: post #16

Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality. As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal. The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to soft…

I think his primary appeal is that, in a world that tends mostly towards people like yourself, who view programming as science (or engineering), he unapologetically took the opposing view. Your perspective is commonly shared; his perspective was undeniably more singular. One can admire that perspective, learn from it, and be inspired by his passion, without necessarily taking the same approach in your own code. I don't write code much like the way _why wrote code, but I admire what he did and what he stood for nonetheless.

_why was drawn to Ruby because of its own artfulness, and playfulness; you would be hard-pressed to come at programming from the same perspective in Python, not because Python isn't a nice language (it is) but because the diktat "there is only one way to do it" necessarily discourages experimental styles of coding, though not of API or visual design. If your medium is code, then it helps to work with a malleable programming language, and Ruby is nothing if not that. Scheme is malleable, but I'd not call it playful. Perl comes closer, but most languages, which are are written by Serious People with Important Goals, do not.

Anything that inspires people to stretch their skills and try new ideas out helps grow teams and developers, though preferably not when working with production code.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#105

Post by koenigdavidmj »

steveklabnik wrote: post #9
nir wrote: post #7

It was a sad day when _why left programming. I always thought he was one of the most creative people currently working in any medium, and we were lucky to have him choose code to express his ideas. Does anyone have any idea what he's been doing since?

> Does anyone have any idea what he's been doing since? Basically, the Ruby community decided that if his wish was to be gone, we'd respect that wish. Nothing has been heard since his disappearance.

I think that any tendencies to find out stuff about him tend to lean in two directions:

* The _why that we knew would not be averse to setting up a puzzle of this sort. * We simply want to make sure that he didn't kill himself or anything like that.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#106

Post by gaius »

davidalln wrote: post #32
jmillikin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code can be used to create art. Wood can be used to create art. An HTML parser is not art, any more than disposable chopsticks are. I've never understood _why's fan base; he seems to be no more than somebody who popped up, wrote a few low-quality libraries for an obscure language, and then vanished.

I guess we disagree on the definition of art. Those disposable chopsticks still required the search for a satisfactory length, width, smoothness, etc. Not to mention, the label and the marketing which equally requires a mastery of human psychology in order to get their product to sell. In this way, the designers have added something great and unique to the world which many people enjoy and use every day. This is art.…

In that case everything is art and the word loses all its meaning.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#107

Post by derefr »

andrewvc wrote: post #17
jacoblyles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_Why had an abnormal personality. He had a busy internal dialogue. He acted for his own reasons, and I don't think we will guess at them. Humans understand new things by comparison to what they already know, so fresh souls are often misunderstood and misclassified.

I think you nailed it. I'll add to that though. often, when people die (and _why did in a sense die), people view everything they did through rose colored lenses. I'm with the majority in HNers in this thread so far, still in awe of _why, however, let's not forget the tough lessons his disappearance taught us. While I greatly appreciated everything _why did for the community and think he truly was an amazing person,…

> the way he left the community, without notice that he would take down his sites and code, was irresponsible

...but that was exactly what he was from the beginning; I don't believe he ever considered himself to be an "open source software author." He said himself (in the article, even) that he was only ever messing around—it was our fault for depending so heavily on what he intended to be either "art" or "toys", but never "work."

His ethic (really an aesthetic, as he was an aesthete) worked well for those who were with him from the start, but it was entirely incompatible with the premise of "software engineering." The only people sore from his loss were those on the outside looking in.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#108

Post by SapphireSun »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #92

Interesting debate on whether programming is an art or science. Fwiw, programming isn't the first field which has undergone this argument. Even Bobby Fischer complained that chess had lost its artistry to a trend of mechanized memorization: "Fischer Random was designed to remove the importance of opening book memorization. Fischer complained in a 2006 phoned-in call with a television interviewer that talented celebri…

I never view mechanization as a bad thing. It just makes the game more intense at the higher levels. If you're chasing the thrill, and chess can't handle improvements in play style, maybe we should find another game that can (for instance, go).

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#109

Post by Daniel_Newby »

gdp wrote: post #24
antirez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming as science: not consistent with reality IMHO. My argument is that it's pretty simple to build a good computer scientist: take a guy with good IQ and put it into a good university. But there are zero guarantees that you'll end with a good coder also, as coding is a matter of taste, tradeoffs, design decisions, creativity, ability to think out of the box, and so forth. The problem is that most of our indust…

I don't consider programming to be a much greater skill than the ability to install fixed wiring in a house or balance a budget. Are small business accountants "artists"? Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science. However, I think that is a much better position to aspire to than self-aggrandizement and glorifying a skill that is really no different than any other skill that any suitably motivated 12 year…

"Accordingly, programming is not _currently_ a science."

Yes it is, it is just that in information processing, the problem domains are often ill-specified and ill-behaved. The system analyst's job is to pull the pin on a wish list grenade, fling it at the engineers, and run away before they realize what has been done to them. The engineers are then forced to pile crap together, reverse-engineer a problem definition, and see if anybody wants to pay for solving it.

Re: _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius

#110

Post by nandemo »

Jun8 wrote: post #94

Being a non-creator, the quote at the end of the article has hit me so hard, I cannot get it off my head for hours now: "When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create." As for the programming is a science or art debate: It is' of course wrong to make such a dichotomy. People who draw a thick boundary between these two, I thin…

I've never read much of _why's work so I don't have much to add to the thread, except that: I did read that quote by _why some months ago and it hasn't gotten off my head since then.

It's like a mantra, and for me it alternates between being inspiring and depressing.

Perhaps I disagree with you. I think programming is a craft, but that's different from art. In any case, though every time we write some code we're creating something, I don't consider the code I write for my day job to be "meaningful" creation (if that was the case every act of labour would be creation and the quote would be meaningless). That's why the quote is depressing sometimes.

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