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A letter from _why

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Re: A letter from _why

#11

Post by nikcub »

wisty wrote: post #10
jessedhillon wrote: post #4

Can someone write an explanation for why this is important? Who is this person?

why (with an underscore) was a cool pseudonymous Ruby programmer / writer, who completely disappeared. He's like the Bobby Fisher of programming, without the crazy. (OK, he sounds a little ... artistic, but that's not really crazy). Some people say he stopped writing because he was in danger of being "outed" by people trying to find his identity. Or maybe he got sick of Ruby, and wanted to do something else (without…

I don't blame him for disappearing. The entire cult that appeared around him was completely against a lot of what he talked about.

Re: A letter from _why

#12

Post by philwelch »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #7
jessedhillon wrote: post #4

Can someone write an explanation for why this is important? Who is this person?

Why The Lucky Stiff is a mercurial enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery. He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby, among other things, put it all out on the Internet, then when it got popular he tried to retract and delete it all and disappear. He only succeeded at the latter though, his books live on. But people still wonder where he went, and hope that one day he'll resurface. This post title implied h…

That's not entirely true. why was happy to remain in the public eye long after he and his book gained notoriety. What you don't mention is his prolific open source work, including the html/xml parser hpricot. why's disappearance seemed to happen just as nokogiri, a technically superior parser, became prominent, though why's motives will never be known for sure. why's last tweets include:

"caller asks, “should i use hpricot or nokogiri?” if you’re NOT me: use nokogiri. and if you’re me: well cut it out, stop being me."

"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive."

Re: A letter from _why

#13

Post by jackowayed »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #7
jessedhillon wrote: post #4

Can someone write an explanation for why this is important? Who is this person?

Why The Lucky Stiff is a mercurial enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery. He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby, among other things, put it all out on the Internet, then when it got popular he tried to retract and delete it all and disappear. He only succeeded at the latter though, his books live on. But people still wonder where he went, and hope that one day he'll resurface. This post title implied h…

As well as the books, he also wrote a few fairly-widely-used Ruby libraries, often with quirks. (eg. Camping, the web framework whose goal is to always have its codebase stay under 4kB)

Re: A letter from _why

#14

Post by bilalhusain »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Please add [2005] to the title. You had my hopes up there for a moment.

Though it would be stupid, but I still wait for the resurrection.

I learnt about _why in 2006 when I came across tryruby. I considered him pretentious and was jealous of his achievements and persona... but grew a much softer side after his disappearance.

Re: A letter from _why

#16

Post by oemera »

philwelch wrote: post #12
SkyMarshal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why The Lucky Stiff is a mercurial enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery. He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby, among other things, put it all out on the Internet, then when it got popular he tried to retract and delete it all and disappear. He only succeeded at the latter though, his books live on. But people still wonder where he went, and hope that one day he'll resurface. This post title implied h…

That's not entirely true. why was happy to remain in the public eye long after he and his book gained notoriety. What you don't mention is his prolific open source work, including the html/xml parser hpricot. why's disappearance seemed to happen just as nokogiri, a technically superior parser, became prominent, though why's motives will never be known for sure. why's last tweets include: "caller asks, “should i use h…

I don't know much about _why but as I read all the stories about his disappearing I can't help but think he had serious problems in his life. To take it personally and go away only because your code is getting old and slow while other learned from it and wrote something better is IMO wrong! You should also learn from libraries and go on write something new and challenge yourself again. Giving up because of a loses match is just not ok.

I also find it pretty odd that no-one seems to know what he is doing now. What about all of his friends? Do they also don't where he is? But I think if someone puts so much energy in hidden himself he shouldn't be found anyway.

Re: A letter from _why

#17

Post by javadyan »

angrycoder wrote: post #8
javadyan wrote: post #6

> They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or “crappy” code. If you worry too much about being clean and tidy, you can’t push the boundaries. Yes, of course. You push the boundaries, move on, and at the end of the day, we have to maintain the stinking pile of "experiments" you left us with. Ugh.

He is encouraging a beginner to have fun and experiment, not write enterprise software.

That's okay, but he is also indirectly encouraging a beginner to not care about the quality of the code he produces. That's bad. You should be afraid to write crappy or unsafe code. Writing clean and safe code is a mandatory skill for any programmer and beginners (especially beginners) should practise it.

After all, if you want to be a programmer, eventually you will have to write code that will be used by other people, and if it's a PITA to maintain (because when writing it you didn't care about cleanness and safety and were just having fun), it's worthless.

Re: A letter from _why

#18

Post by enneff »

oemera wrote: post #16
philwelch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. why was happy to remain in the public eye long after he and his book gained notoriety. What you don't mention is his prolific open source work, including the html/xml parser hpricot. why's disappearance seemed to happen just as nokogiri, a technically superior parser, became prominent, though why's motives will never be known for sure. why's last tweets include: "caller asks, “should i use h…

I don't know much about _why but as I read all the stories about his disappearing I can't help but think he had serious problems in his life. To take it personally and go away only because your code is getting old and slow while other learned from it and wrote something better is IMO wrong! You should also learn from libraries and go on write something new and challenge yourself again. Giving up because of a loses ma…

He was "unmasked" at one point. Last I heard - shortly after his disappearance - he was alive and employed. My take on his disappearance is that he just wanted to bow out of the limelight. Fair enough, IMO.

Re: A letter from _why

#19

Post by paganel »

> I admire programmers who take risks. They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or "crappy" code.

I can still remember the advice a guy at least 10 times smarter than me gave me at the start of my programming career: "One of the most important things for a programmer to have is courage". At that time I couldn't fully understand what he really meant, I was thinking that REST vs. SOAP or PHP vs. Java or OO vs. Functional Programming were way more important for a programmer to get right compared to just having "courage". But as I grow older I realize how wrong was I.

Re: A letter from _why

#20

Post by masklinn »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #7
jessedhillon wrote: post #4

Can someone write an explanation for why this is important? Who is this person?

Why The Lucky Stiff is a mercurial enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery. He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby, among other things, put it all out on the Internet, then when it got popular he tried to retract and delete it all and disappear. He only succeeded at the latter though, his books live on. But people still wonder where he went, and hope that one day he'll resurface. This post title implied h…

> He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby

And interesting libraries and tools (Camping, Hpricot, Redcloth, Syck, Shoes, unHoly — a Ruby to Python compiler, TryRuby and Hackety Hack).

He also looks like the old Jack Black (with hair and beard, Tenacious-D Era)

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