Where’s _why?
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Where’s _why?
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Re: Where’s _why?
#2Link is broken. Any explanation of the article?
Re: Where’s _why?
#3>
For real? Most Rubyists I meet these days are annoying hipster types that I want to smash with their skateboard (yes, yes, I'm huge _why fanboy).
Re: Where’s _why?
#4Link is broken. Any explanation of the article?
The author gives the background of _why, including apparently outing his actual identity and current city of residence.
The author also discusses his own experiences trying to learn programming and specifically ruby. I found this part interesting, because neither the pickaxe book or _why's poignant guide did very much for him, but tryruby.org did seem to help.
While I'm uncomfortable with the fact that they outed _why, the article is pretty interesting to see the non-programmer / beginning programmer perspective in all this. To be fair to the author, apparently _why's identity has already well established in the ruby community.
Re: Where’s _why?
#5Let’s see now. The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine.
And then we get paragraphs detailing how this journalist stalked him trying to get him to comment about the article. Send an email or two, fine, but after sending emails and leaving messages that were all unreturned, after leaving messages with people who know the man behind the pseudonym which were ignored, this journalist still had to track him down to where is is now working and try to get through to talk to him.
Being a journalist does not give you a right to stalk people. You have no special immunity to care and consideration for other people’s feelings. This man is not some sort of villain on the run from the law, he’s a private citizen who wishes to be be left alone, and this “journalist” admits to flirting with the idea of showing up at his house after being repeatedly refused contact.
I strongly disapprove of this conduct, it smacks of hubris to think that some fleeting bit of text, written for the business purpose of getting eyeballs to look at advertisements, is worth huntimg a man down and cornering him when he does not want to be interviewed.
p.s. And regardless of how well the name of the man behind _why is or isn’t known, I also disapprove of repeating it in the article, it was not necessary to the story at all.
Re: Where’s _why?
#6Let’s see now. The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. And then we get paragraphs detailing how this journalist stalked him trying to get him to comment about the article. Sen…
Sounds like the article does a fine job of explaining – by example! – why _why decided to retire from the scene.
(I don't know for sure, though, because I'm not going to read it. Thanks for the summary.)
Re: Where’s _why?
#7And _why himself thought of his [(poignant) guide to Ruby] as a literary project. “The book I feel is closest to my book is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which interleaves brief math puzzles and astronomical diagrams with the story,” he wrote to a listserv. “[I’m] interested in presenting an initial stab at giving literary value to a programming text. I’m also interested in getting people to at least feel what I feel when I program.”
Great quote. _why definitely created a new genre.
Re: Where’s _why?
#8Let’s see now. The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. And then we get paragraphs detailing how this journalist stalked him trying to get him to comment about the article. Sen…
And yet...you were not so offended as to refuse to read it.
Re: Where’s _why?
#9Let’s see now. The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. And then we get paragraphs detailing how this journalist stalked him trying to get him to comment about the article. Sen…
Thank you for this review. It helped me decide not to read the article, both because it doesn't have content and because I have been deliberately avoiding knowing _why's "real" name.
Re: Where’s _why?
#10I liked the article. I'm happy that _why didn't commit _real_ suicide. I will now forget the name of the person that the journalist tracked down, and if I ever meet the guy in person, I'll try not to know it.