Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#121

Post by netghost » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

hazz99 wrote: post #52

netghost wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do some people like onions? Let's not say "Why do Rubyists like this…", consider instead "Why do humans like this…". Some of us liked it because it was fun, and appealed to our sense of humor. Ruby was weird back then. Some of us didn't like it, and for them there was the Pickaxe book among others. Personally I loved what _why did in the early Ruby scene. In fact one day I cold mailed him because I was feeling ra…

What was the project?

It was a sandboxed online Ruby interpreter. Oh gosh, it must have been at least 13 years ago now. The idea that I could execute arbitrary Ruby in a web based repl taking to a server was pretty wild then. Now with docker and web assembly we have lots of options for this kind of thing, but then it was quite exciting.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#122

Post by rottc0dd » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

nicebyte wrote: post #42

thom wrote: post #12

I've always felt this was a singular achievement, one which perfectly captured the spirit of its author, the community he inhabited, and a particular zeitgeist in programming and on the internet. The need for various other authors to attempt to replicate it for other languages by creating rambling, twee books with wacky titles and comic characters of their own, I've frankly found a bit sad and underwhelming. It's a b…

i don't think it was even funny the first time. reading this stuff i always feel like the author is trying to keep my attention by jiggling some car keys in front of my face as if i am an infant. this applies to books like learn you a haskell too.

Well, I think it is subjective.

I found it delightful and I just found it a couple of months ago. It intrigued me and encouraged me to learn the language. And I am reading ruby guides and manuals in late nights. I have no idea _why.

I think the book spoke to my heart. Or I am an infant who is attracted to weird stuff. My point is, it is helpful to some people.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#123

Post by burgertime » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

antod wrote: post #106

cutler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In a perfect world Ruby would have left Python in the dust and enterprise software would be written in Clojure.

> In a perfect world Ruby would have left Python in the dust It pretty much did, but then Rails and Ruby's hype cycle faded a bit, and Python kept going, recovered and found new niches.

You left out Python 3. That lack of a clear transition from Python 2 didn’t help. Despite that, I still think it’s great, but it made it multiple times more difficult for a newbie to get setup.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#124

Post by rottc0dd » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

Falling3 wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if this site was recently put together or if it's been around all along? WHOIS says the domain was registered back in '14. I love _why's writings and largely credit him with getting me excited about using Ruby back when I was in college. Really nice to be reminded of his work.

Somebody put together a page of code and writings of _why[0].

[0]: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#125

Post by dav » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

I'm pretty sure it was _why who set up the first darknet I was ever on. You had to set up your /etc/hosts and do some other tricks, to browse to hidden pages. Unless I'm confusing with another similar thing around the same time, there was some JS involved and you could find hidden features layered on regular websites.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#126

Post by knodi123 » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

djur wrote: post #90

booleandilemma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before stumbling upon Why’s Guide my only experience with programming literature had been dry textbooks. The whimsy was a welcome relief. Someone with your taste would be better off reading The Art of Computer Programming though.

TAOCP isn't exactly a laugh riot but Knuth is kind of known for his sense of humor.

Knuth's presentation on his new project, a replacement for TeX, called iTeX, which offers monthly subscription plans, and discounts for seniors and children under 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKaI78K_rgA

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#127

Post by markdown » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #98

uncomputation wrote: post #71

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> It really is a pretentiousness held in a group of language zealots. Can’t tell if this is ironic or not, but Rubyists are pretty well known as the friendliest out of all language communities, and have been for over a decade now

We had the rock star solo developer phase. Thankfully we grew out of it.

Not all of them were rock stars. Some we ninjas.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#128

Post by zem » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

dav wrote: post #125

I'm pretty sure it was _why who set up the first darknet I was ever on. You had to set up your /etc/hosts and do some other tricks, to browse to hidden pages. Unless I'm confusing with another similar thing around the same time, there was some JS involved and you could find hidden features layered on regular websites.

yep, "mousehole". it was used to effectively add a hidden comment section to random pages.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#129

Post by darthrupert » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #117

cambalache wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I really hate those books that try to be funny and quirky when trying to explain a technical subject. Give me K&R every single time. The problem is not the humor or the silliness, the problem is that for a newbie it is impossible to distinguish what it is important from what is not, what is an exaggerated truth for comic effect and what it isnt. This is a sin very common in popular science/technical book…

There are two kinds of people who are trying to learn code: Those who already think like a programmer, and those who don't. K&R is for one of those. _why's guide is for the other.

And those of us who are not dumb enough to be locked into a single narrow mindset will enjoy them both.

Re: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (2004)

#130

Post by nurettin » Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #61

cutler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Ruby. Only Ruby (and Clojure) can liberate the mind enough to facilitate such flights of fancy :)

It really is a pretentiousness held in a group of language zealots. You don’t hear the same about Nim, for example(yet?), In my experience. I don’t deny Ruby’s impact on the industry I just have a hard time with the attitudes prevalent in the devs I’ve worked with... it is strikingly stereotypical.

We are always on the receiving end of some claims. The feeling of easy accomplishment and unhindered flow is not something you get from every language out there, and not all languages explicitly advertise themselves as "maximizing developer happiness". I've never focused on lisp or emacs, but I am neutral towards their claims that god wrote the universe in lisp. Same with a perl user's claims of succinctness. I don't judge or envy them. Won't know until I learn the language and its tooling. And you won't really know until you try chaining a few map/reduce/select operations and have them compute lazily in ruby.