That's odd -- I had a dream about _why last night.
_why's site is back up
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: _why's site is back up
#132Re: _why's site is back up
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
With regard to why: 1) Drama: fair point. 2) Personality cult: Not as sure. I've seen more than one newb told "don't waste your time" on the Poignant guide in Ruby forums. why's weakness as a coder is pretty widely recognized. In my opinion maybe over-estimated, esp. relative to people like DHH. 3) To me - I learned Ruby when Rails was in its infancy and the Agile salesmen had barely just hitched their wagon to it -…
I wouldn't say _why is a "weak" coder per say. His style is just as eccentric as his character. He's certainly not conventional, and much of his code is slow, but the ideas are often interesting and beautiful. He also abuses a lot of Ruby's metaprogramming facilities. He obviously coded because it amused him. I think that's probably what resulted in the "weaknesses" in his style.
His code is art. And so is his book. It is beautiful, and at times insightful and fascinating. It is not "engineering".
E.g. take Camping (a micro-web-framework that fit in 4K of code) - it is fascinating as a demonstration of some of the things you can do in little space. It is beautiful as art. It has provided inspiration for a lot of us that finds Rails unnecessarily bloated.
It is also totally unreadable for ordinary developers, weird and quirky to the point that if someone had checked something like Camping into one of our work repos, it'd be a "ha-ha, now seriously where is your actualy code?" moment.
The Ruby community appreciates code as art, and is probably more than others inclined to blur the boundary between it and what we will accept or even embrace in production systems. But _why's stuff is mostly firmly on the art side.
There are exceptions, e.g. Hpricot was a nice first try that demonstrates some of _why's skill in terms of creating pleasing interfaces, and he deserves credit for that even though HPricot itself has been largely superseded by Nokogiri.
Re: _why's site is back up
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If he didn't want people to snoop he wouldn't have given them something to snoop into. This remark is rather parallel to "she shouldn't dress that way...". If doing something makes some people behave like creeps, its generally the fault of the creeps. And if the would be mystery man is prepping something, I'd rather he unveiled it than a cabal of creepers.
> If doing something makes some people behave like creeps, its generally the fault of the creeps. That's not correct. If a woman/man comes naked in class, people WILL stare. And it's not their fault, nor is it "creepy", it's only natural. In any case, this is not what we're dealing with here. Nothing creepy about noticing a website re-activated.
That's not correct. If a woman/man comes naked in class, people WILL stare. And it's not their fault, nor is it "creepy", it's only natural.
Weird, last time I checked I actually could avoid staring at people. Naked people too. Must be a superpower or something.
I do agree on the second paragraph, though — this is most definitely not this situation, it's more comparable to person entering a stage and starting to crack jokes.
Re: _why's site is back up
#135Facts: 0. Since 2012-12-09, the following content was available at http://whytheluckystiff.net/ Public Print Queue SPOOL/TEST 2012-12-09T14:12Z SPOOL/IDEAS 2012-12-13T23:26Z SPOOL/NOTES 2012-12-19T00:28Z 0.0. The style of writing and handwriting corresponds to that of Why. 0.1. Prints are very regular. There are 4.4 days between the first two, and 5 between the last two. 1. Going to those addresses yields, in essence…
[deleted]
Re: _why's site is back up
#136Hooray for _why! :D Found a fourth PCL: http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/YOU http://www.scribd.com/doc/119153889/You
This all makes today a very good day. :D
Re: _why's site is back up
#137Facts: 0. Since 2012-12-09, the following content was available at http://whytheluckystiff.net/ Public Print Queue SPOOL/TEST 2012-12-09T14:12Z SPOOL/IDEAS 2012-12-13T23:26Z SPOOL/NOTES 2012-12-19T00:28Z 0.0. The style of writing and handwriting corresponds to that of Why. 0.1. Prints are very regular. There are 4.4 days between the first two, and 5 between the last two. 1. Going to those addresses yields, in essence…
Nice summary, but there's also QUEUE/YOU somewhere in there.
Re: _why's site is back up
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Ruby community's attitude toward him is absurd, along with the personality cults they've formed around David Heinemeier Hansson and Zed Shaw. While other programming language communities have their notable figures, there is never as much outright drama surrounding them as we find in the Ruby community. In fact, these Ruby figures are now better known for the drama surrounding them than they are for any software t…
1. Get into a community not particularly known for its maturity. 2. Become semi-famous in said community by publishing a few puzzles and an intro book about programming. Doesn't have to be particularly insightful, mind blowing or even good by common standards as long as it's "quirky" and light hearted. 3. Become a cult symbol by dropping off the internet. 4. Come back after a few years and receive a Second Coming tre…
It's probably true that rubyists are still "left-brained", whatever that means, but I think they tend to be more on the right side of the left side than other language subcultures. The co-occurrence of terms like "beautiful", "happiness", and "art" in discussions of what ruby means are far higher than in other languages. This is self-reinforcing since a like-minded neophyte will be attracted to a community that talks and acts in ways that she or he finds common ground with. I had learned a bit of python from some well-written but dry books. But Why's poignant guide got me excited about ruby because it was obvious how excited he was by the language, and to some of us that was infectious in the same way chunky bacon is (it's not for everyone).
Re: _why's site is back up
#139Hooray for _why! :D Found a fourth PCL: http://whytheluckystiff.net/SPOOL/YOU http://www.scribd.com/doc/119153889/You
404ing now. Mighta been something he planned to release later?
Re: _why's site is back up
#140Here's hoping he wants Potion back. http://www.github.com/fogus/potion
Looks like fun, really. I never actually checked out many of his projects. Oh well, can't do everything.