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.
> 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.
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.
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.
There's a balance though. In your free time, you should be the mad scientist, but on the job, correctness and maintainability is crucial in your final product. You can even play the mad scientist at work, but production-quality code has to be clean and professional, and that should be your code's final form.
Those who think somehow _why is advocating writing bad code aren't paying attention:
>Twenty lines here and there and soon people will be beating you up and you’ll be scrambling to build on to those scripts and figure our your style and newer innovations and so on.
The point I think is, write (possibly bad) code and evolve. Break stuff, innovate and evolve.
He's a top notch high and low-level programmer with excellent taste for API design (and a language geek). He's also a talented poet/writer, painter/cartoonist/web designer and composer/singer/musician.
From ~2002 to 2009, he released a tremendous amount of material (dozens of code projects, thousands of blog posts), then disappeared abruptly, deleting almost everything he had ever published. His blog posts were humorous yet insightful. His libraries were excellent, some of his snippets were completely baffling. The libraries were always artfully and pedagogically documented.
He wrote in 2005 an essay lamenting the high barier of entry to programming for children in the 2000's whereas Basic was available in every 8/16bit computers when he was a kid. From then on, he tried to improve the situation: first by writing his Poignant guide to Ruby, then by writing http://http://tryruby.org/, the first online REPL, wrapped in an interactive tutorial. At last, he started the Hackety Hack project: an development environment to teach programming to children.
Extremely creative, he (used to?) consider programming to be an art in and of itself, but frequently mixed genres too. His programming book is illustrated with cartoons, fantastic stories and has a sound track that illustrates either the code, the stories, or the book writing process itself. The "This book is made (of rabbits and lemonade)" and "The parts of Ruby/Chunky Bacon" songs gives you a good sample of what his overall production felt like (see below).
He was also excellent at promoting his works, but was ambivalent regarding his own fame.
He also sometimes displayed a darker side (like in the Poignant Guide where he jokingly predicted that he was going to burn out and shoot himself in the head).
Watching him was at the same time entertaining and enlightening, and more, and I definitely wasn't the only person to deeply enjoy what he was doing... When he disappeared people went to no end to recover his works.
Most of his deleted work has been restored from backups (git forks and RSS feeds helped with this). Some of his code projects have been taken over by others, and all are archived here: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/
While active, he was admired. When he disappeared, he became a legend. It's a pity he left so many things unfinished.
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 he has, but alas, it's misleading.
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 the burden of fame). Or he's still working under another identity and persona.
The whole mystery thing is typical of him - he likes bringing a bit of wonder into the world.
'Until an asteroid' is probably one of the best sign-off ever. It's true that we really don't know what's coming down the pipe for us, so code and be happy, or whatever you do, but be excited and motivated about it.
First, you have to learn the rules. Then you have to master the rules. You have to really know what they're for, how they make things better. Then, finally, you can start breaking the rules.
> 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.
Not every programmer aspires to write enterprise-level software. Some people like to tinker and try new things. This is exactly what he is advocating. Leave it to the sterile corporate developers to immediately assume all programming is on 500 KLOC Spring/Hibernate applications.
Ahh I thought this was a letter from 'beyong the grave' rather than a historical one. Oh well. Imagine he's out there doing something clever somewhere.
_why is not an average programmer. His advise is good for masters of programming. He is also a super nice guy and sounds like he thinks anyone could become a super programmer.
I don't think so. And I fear his advice will be taken most to hart by below average programmers.
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bilalhusain|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wyclif|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjbellantoni|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascendant|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] paganel|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] d0m|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarin|14 years ago|reply
It was not only fun to look at, you actually had to type out the code yourself to find out what it did.
[+] [-] omaranto|14 years ago|reply
Or think.
[+] [-] avree|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISeemToBeAVerb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oinksoft|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarin|14 years ago|reply
Then I fix it and it's great.
[+] [-] gnufied|14 years ago|reply
>Twenty lines here and there and soon people will be beating you up and you’ll be scrambling to build on to those scripts and figure our your style and newer innovations and so on.
The point I think is, write (possibly bad) code and evolve. Break stuff, innovate and evolve.
[+] [-] jessedhillon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pygy_|14 years ago|reply
From ~2002 to 2009, he released a tremendous amount of material (dozens of code projects, thousands of blog posts), then disappeared abruptly, deleting almost everything he had ever published. His blog posts were humorous yet insightful. His libraries were excellent, some of his snippets were completely baffling. The libraries were always artfully and pedagogically documented.
He wrote in 2005 an essay lamenting the high barier of entry to programming for children in the 2000's whereas Basic was available in every 8/16bit computers when he was a kid. From then on, he tried to improve the situation: first by writing his Poignant guide to Ruby, then by writing http://http://tryruby.org/, the first online REPL, wrapped in an interactive tutorial. At last, he started the Hackety Hack project: an development environment to teach programming to children.
Extremely creative, he (used to?) consider programming to be an art in and of itself, but frequently mixed genres too. His programming book is illustrated with cartoons, fantastic stories and has a sound track that illustrates either the code, the stories, or the book writing process itself. The "This book is made (of rabbits and lemonade)" and "The parts of Ruby/Chunky Bacon" songs gives you a good sample of what his overall production felt like (see below).
He was also excellent at promoting his works, but was ambivalent regarding his own fame.
He also sometimes displayed a darker side (like in the Poignant Guide where he jokingly predicted that he was going to burn out and shoot himself in the head).
Watching him was at the same time entertaining and enlightening, and more, and I definitely wasn't the only person to deeply enjoy what he was doing... When he disappeared people went to no end to recover his works.
Most of his deleted work has been restored from backups (git forks and RSS feeds helped with this). Some of his code projects have been taken over by others, and all are archived here: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/
While active, he was admired. When he disappeared, he became a legend. It's a pity he left so many things unfinished.
--
The Poignant Guid to Ruby: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/
--
The Redhanded blog, covering all things Ruby: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/
Hackety.org, his next blog on artful programming: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hackety.org/
--
The SoundTrack of the Poignant Guide: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/soundtrack/
Recommended:
- This book is made (of rabbits and lemonade): http://s3.amazonaws.com/mislav.baconfile.com/poignant-guide%...
- The parts of Ruby / Chunky Bacon : http://s3.amazonaws.com/mislav.baconfile.com/poignant-guide%...
.
.
I just found out that it was still possible to buy Chunky Bacon t-shirts: http://www.cafepress.co.uk/blixytees
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teraflop|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
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 the burden of fame). Or he's still working under another identity and persona.
The whole mystery thing is typical of him - he likes bringing a bit of wonder into the world.
[+] [-] mtogo|14 years ago|reply
Some people worship him for reasons i find myself unable to fathom.
[+] [-] api|14 years ago|reply
By far the best byline I have ever read.
[+] [-] misuba|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeff_5nines|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] signa11|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsnotvalid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrabago|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javadyan|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] angrycoder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] grimen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascendant|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oceanician|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] billmcneale|14 years ago|reply
and then:
"I admire programmer who take risks"
Denial much?
By the way: this was written in 2005.
[+] [-] figital|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bh42222|14 years ago|reply
I don't think so. And I fear his advice will be taken most to hart by below average programmers.
[+] [-] mibbit|14 years ago|reply