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A letter from _why

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Re: A letter from _why

#21

Post by [deleted] »

javadyan wrote: post #17
angrycoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

[deleted]

Re: A letter from _why

#22

Post by enneff »

javadyan wrote: post #17
angrycoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

You don't internalize what is bad about bad code until you've written a lot of it. I've written all kinds of terrible code, but I had the good fortune of starting early and learning a lot of valuable lessons before I inflicted too much of my bad code on other people.

I think _why had a lot of great ideas about pedagogy, and experimentation is a great way to internalize "best practices" because you truly understand why they are good (not just because somebody else told you so).

Re: A letter from _why

#23

Post by tristanstraub »

javadyan wrote: post #17
angrycoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

If you want to be a programmer and write code for other people, then yes, cleaner code is easier to hand over.

But, when I first started coding, I wrote it for myself and because it was fun! Why was it fun? Because the code made things happen! Not because it was clean.

Clean code makes writing large projects by yourself and with other people easier. It doesn't necessarily make coding more fun.

Re: A letter from _why

#24

Post by oemera »

enneff wrote: post #18
oemera wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this. I can understand that people want to get out of the light because not everybody can take that.

Re: A letter from _why

#25

Post by ISeemToBeAVerb »

As a beginner at programming, I find _Why to be a breath of fresh air. I realize that experienced coders may berate him for advocating writing sloppy code, but for someone (like me) who is just getting into this deep rabbit hole, I find his thoughts to be encouraging. I fully agree with some of the comments here that mention writing bad code is the only path to writing clean and safe code. I wish more experienced hackers could recall a day that, they too, wrote bad code. As a beginner, I'm positive that much of my code would make people here cringe, but hey, at least I'm learning! Ultimately, I think that was Why's point. Kids and beginners shouldn't worry if their code is "correct", they should just write code and keep learning. I think that's a noble endeavor and a great legacy.

Re: A letter from _why

#26

Post by wtracy »

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…

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

... or any sufficiently large and financially important enterprise code, really. :-(

Re: A letter from _why

#27

Post by 16s »

oemera wrote: post #24
enneff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this. I can understand that people want to get out of the light because not everybody can take that.

Some people have jobs where it's discouraged to stand-out or draw attention outside of work. Doing so is looked-down upon and may lead to reprimand or termination. I have no idea if this was the case for _why, I just want to point that out.

Re: A letter from _why

#28

Post by avree »

jarin wrote: post #9

My favorite _why-ism was how he would hand write and scan code snippets for his blog (often without any explanation of what it did). Then, when lazy people started OCR-ing the images, he would post code as animated GIFs. It was not only fun to look at, you actually had to type out the code yourself to find out what it did.

Which is a really, really, really awesome way to force people to learn code.

Re: A letter from _why

#29

Post by grimen »

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.

Example: Do you paint and/or build because you feel like it, or because it pays your bills? I doubt a child got bills to pay, so why do they paint and/or build LEGO? Code can be art and play too.
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