Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 149 posts

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#131

Post by joshbert »

astrange wrote: post #73
q845712 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly at the time I remember getting weird twee/precious vibes from the Ruby community and I wasn't particularly interested in it or Rails. I only discovered _why's poignant guide later after I had to learn Rails on the job, and to be honest I never finished it. I still strongly prefer the worldview, circumstances, mindset, etc. where that kind of content is written, read, and celebrated over today's focus on Infl…

I seem to remember multiple incidents where Rails programmers complained that everyone at the conference they went to was playing Werewolf instead of sticking to the topic. It made me wonder what kind of community would lead to that. As for _why, there is nothing special about him. If you need an overly precious twee white guy, we have a natural source of them called the city of Portland. You can go find another ten…

> As for _why, there is nothing special about him

That sounds patently false to me considering we're still talking about him almost 20 years after his flagship work was published.

Minimizing _why because of a tired, narrow-minded focus on identity politics seems disingenuous and like a missed opportunity to learn

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#132

Post by wyclif »

q845712 wrote: post #60
Arubis wrote: post #14

_why's work was much of what got me into Ruby in the first place. Not so much quirky as proudly both hyperliterate and unhinged, like the computing world's extension of depressed indie bands meeting David Foster Wallace in the early aughts. Most of us that would've been into _why's stuff now have more traditional-looking jobs and responsibilities. But I'm so grateful for what he showed us then, and miss the more genu…

Honestly at the time I remember getting weird twee/precious vibes from the Ruby community and I wasn't particularly interested in it or Rails. I only discovered _why's poignant guide later after I had to learn Rails on the job, and to be honest I never finished it. I still strongly prefer the worldview, circumstances, mindset, etc. where that kind of content is written, read, and celebrated over today's focus on Infl…

I actually knew _why's real identity, but I refused to divulge it partly because I didn't want his performance to end (even though, sadly, I knew it couldn't last forever) and partly because _why is a fellow native of my home state of Pennsylvania. And I totally agree that his whimsical style is far more preferable than anything every written by any LinkedIn programming "influencer."

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#133

Post by wyclif »

astrange wrote: post #73
q845712 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly at the time I remember getting weird twee/precious vibes from the Ruby community and I wasn't particularly interested in it or Rails. I only discovered _why's poignant guide later after I had to learn Rails on the job, and to be honest I never finished it. I still strongly prefer the worldview, circumstances, mindset, etc. where that kind of content is written, read, and celebrated over today's focus on Infl…

I seem to remember multiple incidents where Rails programmers complained that everyone at the conference they went to was playing Werewolf instead of sticking to the topic. It made me wonder what kind of community would lead to that. As for _why, there is nothing special about him. If you need an overly precious twee white guy, we have a natural source of them called the city of Portland. You can go find another ten…

I don't think that's true at all. If you go back and read his stuff, it ages pretty well in my estimation, largely because _why was apolitical. And he was way more informed by good humanities sources than any average Portland woke hipster.

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#134

Post by astrange »

joshbert wrote: post #131
astrange wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember multiple incidents where Rails programmers complained that everyone at the conference they went to was playing Werewolf instead of sticking to the topic. It made me wonder what kind of community would lead to that. As for _why, there is nothing special about him. If you need an overly precious twee white guy, we have a natural source of them called the city of Portland. You can go find another ten…

> As for _why, there is nothing special about him That sounds patently false to me considering we're still talking about him almost 20 years after his flagship work was published. Minimizing _why because of a tired, narrow-minded focus on identity politics seems disingenuous and like a missed opportunity to learn

That's because the rest of them are working in other fields (combination coffee bars, thrift stores and barber shops.) I am proposing hiring them as tech writers instead.

Also, I don't think identity politics particularly have anything to do with it. (Japanese people are even more hipster than Portlanders and of course invented Ruby, so you could probably find some of them too for diversity. The aesthetic would be different though because of cultural differences.)

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#135

Post by gsinclair »

throwanem wrote: post #90
ertian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must have been awful when you were forced to engage with a whimsical community like that. I mean...I'm assuming you were forced, because why else would you harbor so much bitterness over the fact that there were once some people who did things differently than you would have liked?

Come now. Surely you can find something to criticize in what I've actually said, without needing to resort to footless inference about my person.

Your long rant is not actually interesting or factual enough to criticise in detail.

I’m only writing this reply to point out that you have already engaged in a lot of making footless inference about other people’s person, so please don’t be surprised if the same is done to you.

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#136

Post by steveklabnik »

wyclif wrote: post #133
astrange wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember multiple incidents where Rails programmers complained that everyone at the conference they went to was playing Werewolf instead of sticking to the topic. It made me wonder what kind of community would lead to that. As for _why, there is nothing special about him. If you need an overly precious twee white guy, we have a natural source of them called the city of Portland. You can go find another ten…

I don't think that's true at all. If you go back and read his stuff, it ages pretty well in my estimation, largely because _why was apolitical. And he was way more informed by good humanities sources than any average Portland woke hipster.

> largely because _why was apolitical.

I mean, he is pretty expressly anticapitalist in this work. The name "why the lucky stiff" is found in Rand. _why was regularly political, though it wasn't always a focus of his.

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#137

Post by gsinclair »

masto wrote: post #71
anyfoo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others already explained this, I just wanted to add that you make me feel old...

I'm 48. I don't think age has anything to do with knowing the context behind this. From the other explanations, you apparently had to follow a very specific subculture dedicated to a specific individual. I did not, rather the opposite. I tried to read his Ruby book when it came out and I simply couldn't. No offense to the vast army of folks who enjoyed it -- I think we're all allowed to like what we like. There's som…

Dude, it’s ok.

I loved the work _why did back at the time, in general. Doesn’t mean I loved every single thing.

In particular, I never bothered to finish the poignant guide. It didn’t speak to me. But I loved the fact that it enthused other people.

There never was a need for worship as far as _why was concerned.

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#138

Post by gsinclair »

steveklabnik wrote: post #59
local_crmdgeon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has he ever reached out to you? His identity isn't that hard to work out - though he's no longer an engineer. I think it's good to leave him alone, that's what wants.

We have never spoken. He came to my hometown once, for an event, but I could not attend as I was out of town that weekend. Part of me would love to talk to him someday, and part of me would prefer that we don't. I am incredibly thankful that he braved the danger to give us this; in some ways I do feel like this was us talking. It's complicated.

Thank you for your sensitive curatorial work, Steve.

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#139

Post by svat »

jhbadger wrote: post #108
preseinger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's definitely possible to model programming as an art, and there is value in that model, but (imo) that model is neither productive nor accurate in most programming contexts

Knuth doesn't mean "art" as in "fine art to be admired" but rather "art" as in a description of something about which it is not possible to be purely scientific about.

He means both. From his 1974 Turing lecture ("Computer Programming as an Art" http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html):

> To summarize: We have seen that computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty.

(See also, from an earlier paragraph “When I speak about computer programming as an art, I am thinking primarily of it as an art form, in an aesthetic sense.” — though the summary is a better reflection of his views.)

Re: Closure, from why the lucky stiff (2013)

#140

Post by [deleted] »

masto wrote: post #71
anyfoo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others already explained this, I just wanted to add that you make me feel old...

I'm 48. I don't think age has anything to do with knowing the context behind this. From the other explanations, you apparently had to follow a very specific subculture dedicated to a specific individual. I did not, rather the opposite. I tried to read his Ruby book when it came out and I simply couldn't. No offense to the vast army of folks who enjoyed it -- I think we're all allowed to like what we like. There's som…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN