_why is no more

racheltostring: RT: @_why: programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more. about 21 hours ago from TwitterFox

tremendo2• 17 years ago

programming is rather thankless...

Maybe he read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771057 in Re: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771013 ?

basugasubaku• 17 years ago

He was (understandably) a bit sensitive about new works displacing his. He almost seemed to suspect some sort of conspiracy against Hpricot:

"Clearly, the benchmarks you see on Ruby Inside are skewed to favor Nokogiri... Why not treat Hpricot fairly and use it properly in the benchmarks? It reeks of something."

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/181699

delackner2• 17 years ago

This is exactly why such a complete self-deletion is worrying. I wasn't around in the neolithic days of the internet, but some people may remember that an early formative event in the WELL days was that a very well known and active contributor to the site deleted his entire posting history and then commited real life suicide. I dearly hope this has not happened and _why has simply moved on to other things...

pnomolos• 17 years ago

:( Sad indeed.

sho7• 17 years ago

That was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well. Sure, nuke your Twitter, who cares. But people might have been depending on the repos; it's a breach of trust IMO.

Not impressed.

arghnoname2• 17 years ago

Yeah I think so too. My initial reaction was that this is his right, which technically I'm sure it is. It does call into question an unspoken rule of open source though, which is you can abandon your stuff if you want, but don't try to remove all traces, even if that is ultimately a futile act.

jamesbritt2• 17 years ago

OTOH, I have to believe there are many people with copies of that code.

noodle2• 17 years ago

assuming that this is a tantrum, yes. not impressed, only really detrimental. at least have the courtesy to leave your stuff as it is for the people who have and will benefit from it, instead of scrubbing it all clean.

on the other hand, if this is a case of someone managing to crack/guess/etc his passwords and just wants to do some malicious damage, that would be too bad.

donw2• 17 years ago

Agreed; it's really childish.

patio11• 17 years ago

That was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well.

They were git repos, right? I am new to git, but my understanding is you pretty much have to type

git clone --i-dont-want-a-full-copy-of-the-repository-please-screw-me-over-if-the-master-vanishes

to be in a position where you are "dependent" on the code (i.e. have looked at it, ever) and do not have a full copy of the entire project extending to the mists of prehistory.

[Edit: apparently the actual command is

git clone --depth (some number)

I like my version better.]

antonovka• 17 years ago

Let's wait for the circumstances before passing judgement.

rcoder3• 17 years ago

Have a little respect. Unlike most of us here, _why never profited directly on his online celebrity status. If he chose to remove himself from the 'net, it seems only reasonable that he would want to shut down public repositories he managed, if only to avoid the inevitable deluge of complaints about them going stale, requests for commit rights from other people, etc.

The fact that you would care more about his shepherding of repositories which have been available to everyone else all along speaks volumes to me about the kind of attitudes that probably helped to drive him offline in the first place.

mosburger4• 17 years ago

You know, I've been mulling over this "was it an immature/douchebaggy thing to do?" question, and my gut was with the "leave this guy alone, he doesn't owe you anything, it's open source" camp initially.

Then I thought - what if, e.g., Zed Shaw had done this? I have a feeling we'd all be calling for his head and claiming it was the biggest douchebag move he could make. So does _why get a free pass? Because he's so likable and has a special pedestal in the Ruby world?

I honestly don't know the answer to that, but it made me reconsider my gut knee-jerk reaction.

mtodd• 17 years ago

Holy shit... _why is why I'm a Ruby developer to this day, especially the Poignant Guide.

So very sad.

tcoffeep5• 17 years ago

Same here :(

mr_justin3• 17 years ago

Why is it sad? Because he deleted his accounts? Or are you assuming something bad has happened to him and his accounts where deleted by somebody else?

Why strikes me as the kind of person who would delete his online presence on a whim, just because it would be fun.

masonbrowne• 17 years ago

I was already digging into Ruby when I found out about _why... but he's definitely a big chunk of the reason I stuck with it for so long, AND served as a good vehicle for evangelizing Ruby to new people...

TheProkrammer4• 17 years ago

THE PURGES HAVE BEGUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!

Seriously though, I hope he's /okay/....

donw2• 17 years ago

Good point; hopefully he's not suicidal. Anybody know the guy personally?

jamesbritt2• 17 years ago

Rip it up and start again.

r1cky• 17 years ago

hacked?

rneufeld• 17 years ago

Domains are still up and registered to him...

Strange indeed.

  Registrar..: gkg.net (http://register.gkg.net/)
    Domain Name: WHYTHELUCKYSTIFF.NET
	Created on..............: 03-JAN-2002
	Expires on..............: 03-JAN-2014
	Record last updated on..: 24-DEC-2008
	Status..................: ACTIVE

  Registrar..: gkg.net (http://register.gkg.net/)
    Domain Name: HACKETYHACK.NET
	Created on..............: 25-FEB-2007
	Expires on..............: 25-FEB-2010
	Record last updated on..: 24-DEC-2008
	Status..................: ACTIVE

  Registrar..: gkg.net (http://register.gkg.net/)
    Domain Name: POIGNANTGUIDE.NET
	Created on..............: 20-NOV-2003
	Expires on..............: 20-NOV-2010
	Record last updated on..: 24-DEC-2008
	Status..................: ACTIVE

eli3• 17 years ago

Indeed. The web server appears to still be turned on too.

   $ curl -i hacketyhack.net
   curl: (52) Empty reply from server

Hexstream• 17 years ago

Thank god. Would be aggravating if they were picked up by a squatter.

andyleclair• 17 years ago

Maybe he's planning for a big star-spangled blowout and is getting us ready for it? Kind of like if MJ had jumped out of his coffin at the Staples Center to start singing Thriller?

timinman6• 17 years ago

Actually this might happen, sometimes his sites go down before a new release, but what puzzles me is github.

digitalhobbit• 17 years ago

Really hope he's ok...

antipax• 17 years ago

There's a phone number in his whois records for his domain names... though calling it would be a just a little creepy.

utx00• 17 years ago

why would he not be ok?!?! lets put this in perspective.

tremendo2• 17 years ago

That's really odd. Just yesterday he had picked up on Twitter again after a several-days/weeks hiatus.

daveungerer• 17 years ago

I managed to dig up a PDF copy of his Poignant Guide to Ruby over here: http://www.ember.co.nz/resources/whys-poignant-guide-to-ruby...

Anyone who hasn't checked it out yet, do yourself a favour. And for the rest of us, who would like to remember this anonymous creator of cartoon foxes.

Let's hope it's just a quarter life crisis and that he's back soon. Or that he finds something else that makes him happier than programming.

geek4christ2• 17 years ago

Someone has also created a github project to archive his work: http://github.com/binary42/why-archive/tree/master

It currently has a pdf of the guide.

carbon83• 17 years ago

FWIW, I noticed that all of his sites were down for a period sunday night, too. I figured he was just doing something on the server and everything was back up the next day. I didn't check his github or twitter, though.

random-passerby• 17 years ago

Couldn't possibly be that he's fed up with Open Source and the ruby community...

TheProkrammer4• 17 years ago

Even if he is, taking down ANY trace of your online presence is highly unusual.

gcb• 17 years ago

he did post some PHP projects lately....

mosburger4• 17 years ago

Someone has already edited his Wikipedia page to mention his online disappearance.

techpeace• 17 years ago

Maybe the title of one of his RailsConf sessions gives us some clue: "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever."

mmaaxx3• 17 years ago

and I deleted his "real" name that they put on there.

ejc• 17 years ago

Why the Lucky Stiff has become Why the [deprecated] Stiff. http://twitpic.com/ehkoy

tylerhunt• 17 years ago

Judging by this, it looks like his account was hacked: http://twitpic.com/ehm2h.

zck• 17 years ago

Assuming that was his account (it seems like he'd be more likely to register _why), this is consistent with him deleting his account, and someone pouncing on the now-free username -- note that this account was created today.

doki_pen4• 17 years ago

I think anyone could have created a new account with the name _why after he left.

blaaaah• 17 years ago

Okay folks, let's not overreact. Odds are all of his sites are running on the same host, so someone screwing around could take them all down once inside. And if his twitter account used the same password...

apotheon3• 17 years ago

Maybe he used the same password at PerlMonks:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=2048

timinman6• 17 years ago

_why got me back into programming and into ruby, first with "Try Ruby!" in the browser and later Hackety Hack. When I asked if I could use hackety to build a web app, he steered me toward rails. I've used tons of his library, especially hpricot.

You're an important part of this community, _why. I hope you're not saying goodbye.

timinman6• 17 years ago

You're an important part of this community, _why. I hope you're not saying goodbye.

dazmax• 17 years ago

Someone outed him here: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/

pol2• 17 years ago

What a mean-spirited thing to do to someone who just wanted to stay anonymous. It makes me sad and angry.

If this is the reason _why decided to pick up and leave, I understand it. We have his code, it will live on. Perhaps he will return in another guise.

mosburger4• 17 years ago

Something doesn't seem right about that detective work - there's a Jonathan Gillette online who is a web developer in Harrisburg, PA who doesn't seem to be _why. Obviously it's likely that there's more than one Jonathan Gillette on the internet, but it seems odd to me that this other guy is also a web developer, with a decent online presence, in (somewhat) the same geographic area where _why is suspected to live, that isn't him.

But I don't know enough about e-mail headers to provide an alternate explanation if there is one.

EDIT: This is that other guy's site, FWIW: http://jonathangillette.net/

And he's on twitter: http://twitter.com/jgillette

EDIT 2: The infamous Zed Shaw posted a link to another page which I'm more inclined to believe is the real _why. I'm not going to post the link here, but you can find it in Zed's twitter stream if you really want to.

petercooper6• 17 years ago

I'm sure someone in the know told me his real name a couple years back (he wrote the foreword to my book) and it certainly wasn't Jonathan Gillette. Of course, he might have changed him name again.. :)

jpeterson• 17 years ago

Nope, whoever created this site was trolled.

UncleOxidant• 17 years ago

but that was over a month ago, why would he wait that long?

blasdel3• 17 years ago

misuba on HN said his first name is Michael: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=683061

scorpion032• 17 years ago

Ok, Now, who did this?

infodig4• 17 years ago

I am posting this because I feel it is worthwhile information. It is within _why's rights to yank his sites off the Internet at a moments notice. I will not begrudge him that. However, I do think when people come to rely on your tools and software you should at least respect that people rely on you, if informally.

Also, I think that, since he was hosting a lot of other sites on hobix, not just his personal stuff something could actually be wrong. So I am sharing this information. Please be responsible.

I dug up a Kylie Gillette who is the owner of snapd.net, Snapdragon Jewelry. A quick whois on that domain: Registrant: Layered Technologies TheLuckyStiff Why 1647 Witt Rd. Ste. # 20 Frisco, TX 75034 US +1.9723987998 86a756e735644786cd09875d0acb61365fb02f36@whois.gkg.net

So there is also this: http://www.assessor.slco.org/test/cfml/Query/valuationInfo.c...

What are the chances that a Jonathan Gillette hosting a website for Kylie Gillette who posted to a ruby mailing list as _why and Jonathan Gillette in 02 and 03 are different people? If something is wrong or something has happened to him IRL people would rest a little easier knowing what is going on.

sabat• 17 years ago

http://www.manta.com/company/mmntyj8

davelee• 17 years ago

I wanted to try Potion, it might be too late now.

burke8• 17 years ago

http://github.com/whymirror/potion/tree

geek4christ2• 17 years ago

His last message to us all:

   @_why: an ascending homage to fish bones. culminating in a delicate canopy of mouse furs.

RIP, online presence of _why

CraigBuchek2• 17 years ago

So long, and thanks for all the fish....

nevans2• 17 years ago

That sounds a bit more morbid without the context leading up to it:

_why: nailing a small ornate gold shelf at arm’s height above the bed for my cat to sit on. i give you: norton’s perch.

_why: i should probably have little teeny shelves all leading up to it. with their own miniature portraits or doll banisters or something.

strathmeyer: @_why Do cat structures last longer than programming structures?

_why: @strathmeyer hard to say, i guess if this feline staircase falls into disrepair, i’ll swap in a circular queue.

_why: an ascending homage to fish bones. culminating in a delicate canopy of mouse furs.

I will truly miss why's wonderful whimsy. :-(

jcl• 17 years ago

It looks like someone is in the process of mirroring what they can find:

http://github.com/whymirror

mloy• 17 years ago

Being actively anonymous is an open invitation for having your identity discovered and released. He knew it was coming. Deleting any trace of himself was planned, it was not done in heat of passion after being outed.

h3h• 17 years ago

John Resig has posted a eulogy: http://ejohn.org/blog/eulogy-to-_why/

TheRealPeteShaw• 17 years ago

You're all a bunch of suckers

wrinklz2• 17 years ago

Thank you. Before you bunch of women get too hysterical, you might want to take a look at this.

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/08/11

I'll just assume _why is vacationing in Europe.

joeycfan3• 17 years ago

Holy crap this is a disaster!

This guy is one of lord high masters of the geek art crafts and sciences.

Where ever you are Why, I hope you're all right..

wrinklz2• 17 years ago

He changed his name to _when and is working on perl 6.

don_gery• 17 years ago

this is clearly jack black.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Whytheluc...

khelll• 17 years ago

http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/

brianto2010• 17 years ago

It seems that not every account was taken down...

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9c5on/where_is_...

mailboxtom• 17 years ago

Let _why-gones be _why-gones

crapfactory• 17 years ago

you RoR guys are the sad ones, its all 100% cult of personality.

get real he's only one person, if your community can't survive and thrive w/out him, it should die

banister• 17 years ago

first up _why was active in more than the RoR community (look at potion, shoes, unholy, etc). Secondly, the majority of comments have been directed towards the dramatic way in which he left and the fact he will be sorely missed.

_oldhat• 17 years ago

Old hat, but take a very careful look at p27 of Nobody Knows Shoes (pdf version) with the text: So flows hit the end and move down ...

If that isn't Kylie ...

grandalf2• 17 years ago

I noticed that people had been ripping on his code a bit lately... I think the Ruby community's embrace of Nokogiri really hurt the man's feelings.

_why has been a great contributor to the Ruby community... let's hope he reincarnates himself :)

DanielStraight• 17 years ago

Well that sort of ruins one's day. I hope everything is alright with him.

carbon83• 17 years ago

Apparently he tweeted this yesterday (quoted from a retweet): "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

But _why's contributions are largely irreplaceable. Yeah, software evolves and individual projects might be supplanted by others, but his contributions go way beyond simply writing functioning code.

arghnoname2• 17 years ago

I'm not in the ruby world, so perhaps that's why his contributions have largely been outside my sphere and there may be a great deal I'm unaware of. That said, when someone goes and removes their repositories and whatever other traces of their workproduct they have access to (as is their right), it might make people reluctant to use their products in the future (assuming they return).

rcoder3• 17 years ago

_why has never really made "products" -- in fact, as far as I know, he's never made money from any of the stuff he shared online. (Sales of physical copies of the Poignant Guide may be the one exception to this, but IIRC, he priced it exactly at his cost in order to insure the widest possible distribution.)

there• 17 years ago

Apparently he tweeted this yesterday: "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

ironically he wrote "you" on twitter, and you wrote "u" on hn.

Jeremysr2• 17 years ago

It's from a retweet I believe, where the retweeter replaced "you" with "u", perhaps to fit it into 140 chars.

embeddedradical• 17 years ago

burn out?

wyw• 17 years ago

But _why's contributions are largely irreplaceable.

Sadly this is not true for anyone.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

Not in the programming world, which is sad.... but hopefully that isn't the only place we live in.

grandalf2• 17 years ago

There has been some negativity about hpricot lately:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=Nokogiri%20hpricot

peregrine• 17 years ago

And hpricot is the only living remnant of _why.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

but not totally gone on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=RT+%40_why

hvs2• 17 years ago

Is it just me, or does Ruby tend have these "personalities" more than other communities? Seems like the Ruby community focuses a lot on the "rockstar" mentality. I don't spend any time in it to know for sure, though.

jeremymcanally• 17 years ago

Maybe we just have more interesting people? :)

netghost4• 17 years ago

He was more like ruby's Batman than rockstar

pavelludiq2• 17 years ago

_Why is more like a fairy tale character than a rock star. What qualities of his persona do you consider to be rock star qualities?

bd• 17 years ago

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/

scott_s5• 17 years ago

Wearing sunglasses during a talk.

hvs2• 17 years ago

By "rock star" I just meant the lone, dedicated, popular, and generally charismatic developer that has a lot of people talking about how great he/she is. A personality.

Again, I don't travel in Ruby circles, so I don't know of _why and can't speak about him personally. I just seem to hear about specific developers from the Ruby circle more than, say, C#.

compay• 17 years ago

Yes it does. Actually it's one of the reasons I like the Ruby community.

subbu• 17 years ago

People liked him because of the quality of the stuff he produced. I personally haven't seen rockstar qualities from him. Most of his work (code/blog) are to the point and of high quality.

petercooper6• 17 years ago

Yeah it does. It's a bit like Linux-land has more interesting personalities than Microsoft-land or how skateboarders tend to be more exciting than WalMart workers.

callahad• 17 years ago

Which is why I love Zed Shaw's response:

"Hmm, I think it's more possible that _why got hacked than he pulled a me." http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3409334842

tptacek• 17 years ago

What, the fact that he managed to make this about him?

stcredzero• 17 years ago

Smalltalk had it's share of personalities. I am witness to drama at OOPSLA that would have made for some damn good movie scenes. But all of this predates YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, etc...

mitchellh• 17 years ago

_why was to the ruby community what willy wonka was to chocolate. Maybe, just as the fictional Willy Wonka secluded himself in his chocolate factory for so many years due to competition, _why is simply secluding himself in his programming factory.

Deliciously sweet chocolates (or libraries/books/hacketyhack/etc.) will hopefully magically still appear.

Maybe _why is simply going to oompa loompa land to get little helpers.

judofyr4• 17 years ago

Where is Charlie?

mbreese2• 17 years ago

Waiting for his golden chunky bacon ticket...

netghost4• 17 years ago

That's terrible, his code and posts always brightened my day.

dylanz2• 17 years ago

I hope he didn't take my extremely down voted, (apparently) not funny, pun ridden comment on this article too seriously. My puns were harmless, I swear. Any comic drawn in programming text immediately makes me think of _why: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771013

But seriously, reading _why's poignant guide to ruby back in the day was a breath of fresh air coming from Java, and wanting to try something new. His intermingled illustrations and humorous text made a programming book that I actually found enjoyable to read. Also, his contributions in terms of libraries and interesting apps has been awesome.

_why: My hats off to you fine sir! May you find goodness on your latest adventures!

joeycfan3• 17 years ago

I remember checking the Guide just for a joke, and on the FIRST PAGE I learned something - that you can delimit ruby numbers with _ for commas - 3_600 is a legal 3600 to ruby.

jefurii• 17 years ago

i've taken the python path instead of the ruby one, but _why's poignant guide is simply amazing. the only programming book i know of that's both psychedelic and actually useful. well not as a reference, but great for expanding your mind. _why, if you're reading, blessings to you. i thank you for enriching my programming life, and i hope we hear from you again.

nevans2• 17 years ago

I learned ruby via his blog, via his poignant guide, and via the older edition copy of the pitchaxe which he had hosted on his site. I really hope he's not going into seclusion for good. :-(

tsally• 17 years ago

I suspect some sort of burn out. Honestly the guy was a machine. I remember looking at his commit logs for all of his public Github projects and wondering how he managed it. And mind you, that only accounts for code publicly released and doesn't address any private projects he might have been working on.

doki_pen4• 17 years ago

I'm on the shoes mailing list and he recently made this announcement:

Aug 3rd: <quote> Okay, wow, hello, I'm very behind on this list, I hope you will pardon me. I've been away for the summer, taking a break from everything.

Well, enough of that, time's up: I hope to concentrate strictly on getting Shoes 3 done. While it's disappointing to see what a poor job I've done with Shoes, I am going to try to do what I can to aright the situation by at least getting us some more speed and stability. (As with all of my projects, it's just a toy experiment which is full of an unpredictable amount of both the sweet and bitter.)

My hope is to release the final version by September 7th. Please, if you want something fixed for Shoes 3, it will need to be filed on github, in the issues section. Yes, I think that will work just great.

_why </quote>

Perhaps this is a publicity stunt to popularize the new and improved Hackety Hack?!

ch0wda• 17 years ago

camping 4eva!

masomenos• 17 years ago

note to downvoters: "camping" is a brilliant and bizarre microframework for MVC web apps, courtesy of our friend why.

ananthrk2• 17 years ago

The title is inappropriate (without really knowing what happened to _why). Only his online identify is no more!

mbreese2• 17 years ago

I don't know about that. I think _why was his online identity... only sometimes he ventured into the real-world to talk to people.

So, perhaps it is accurate, since it seems like the online persona has vanished, so in a way _why is no more.

Maybe the real person needed to escape from the persona... who knows?

ananthrk2• 17 years ago

Technically _why is his online persona and I can now understand/analyze your argument. But my first thought after reading the title was "OMG!!". Not fair.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

This sort of sloppiness makes me really angry.

Perhaps that has to do with the day that I woke up to NPR on the radio, and the announcer said "Douglas Adams... bestselling science-fiction writer..." and I immediately knew, before even hearing the next word, that my favorite author was dead.

I have flashbacks to that day. And I just had one now.

Worst. Linkbait. Ever.

myobie• 17 years ago

I was playing with hackityhack last night, trying to find a way to contribute to it. It's very important to me that young people have an easy way to learn programming and I think he was really on the right track.

asenchi3• 17 years ago

Wow, one of the few personalities to ever remain truly anonymous on the Internet vanishes in a day. Sad sad day. :(

gaius2• 17 years ago

No, his real name has been on HN before.

asenchi3• 17 years ago

Do you have a link for this, as far as I know, no one knows his real name, job, etc.

scythe• 17 years ago

What about moot and weev? They're not members of the open source community, but they are notorious.

asenchi3• 17 years ago

moot's identity was revealed. weev I've not seen any proof yet that he's been outed. I'll correct my post.

shaunxcode• 17 years ago

Man - what a bum out. The talk he gave at art + code was awesome and seriously inspired me to focus more on educational material for teaching kids to program. I hope he at least gives a more valid reason for removing everything. I can understand letting something become dormant - but others can take what you have done and be inspired and or build upon it. That is not a slight to you it's just the way a system grows. Like layers of sediment upon rock upon sediment. If I ever discovered that a piece of my code/idea had made its way into something someone else had done I would be stoked not bummed out.

unalone3• 17 years ago

Please tell me this talk is online.

pauldino• 17 years ago

It is indeed: http://www.vimeo.com/5047563

chrisrhoden• 17 years ago

Please remember the incredible amount of pressure he felt to continue support for older projects. That is why he initially set timelimits on certain projects. If he had stopped committing, people would have been beating down his door for an explanation.

marcusestes• 17 years ago

I have a feeling that this disappearing act is part of a ritualized collecting of energies that he needs to release Hackety Hack. He originally meant it to be ready for Art and Code and I have a feeling that many side-projects since then (including Potion) have been produced out of nervous energy misapplied to tasks other than his One True Project.

His feelings aren't hurt, I doubt that very much.

mbrubeck2• 17 years ago

One of my favorite local (Seattle) musicians is Jason Webley. Every year or two he stages a big concert where he "dies" at the end in some staged way, then remains "dead" for the next 6 to 12 months, with no public appearances while he works on a major project. Then, usually on his birthday, he has another big event where he is "born" and then reveals the fruits of his labor.

tcoffeep5• 17 years ago

:( A sad day.

delano• 17 years ago

Thanks for all the fish, _why!

mattmcknight• 17 years ago

He should probably be the one thanking us for the fish. (And we should be the ones preparing for the imminent destruction of our planet).

n8agrin• 17 years ago

_why just posted a new repo on github: http://github.com/why/lol/tree/master

EDIT: Weird, the repo description is "wtf adam, are you this slow". Hope he didn't get hacked.

EDIT 2: original link is dead.

gamache5• 17 years ago

That does not appear to be the same 'why' account as before. 0 followers, created today.

judofyr4• 17 years ago

Probably some guy just registered the username after _why deleted it.

zefhous• 17 years ago

The Hpricot wiki is still live on github, and the website is still up too.

http://wiki.github.com/why/hpricot http://hpricot.com/

One of the most thoroughly documented libraries that I have used.

It's interesting that he gave a talk in 2005 called "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever" (from his Wikipedia article)

Anyone know anything about what he said about the Polo Champ in the talk?

generalk• 17 years ago

There's a new repository up on his Github: http://github.com/why/lol/tree/master

Description: wtf adam, are you this slow

I'm guessing he got hacked.

Edit: Nevermind, the repo's been deleted.

benatkin5• 17 years ago

Apparently there's no holding period for deleted names on GitHub.

If he wanted his twitter account to be taken by somebody else, he could have renamed it before deleting it. If you rename a twitter account, the old name is freed up instantly, but if you delete an account, it is held for an unknown period of time.

timinman6• 17 years ago

_why got me back into programming and into ruby, first with Try Ruby! in the browser and later Hackety Hack. When I asked if I could use hackety to build a web app, he steered me toward rails. I've used tons of his library, especially hpricot. If you're listening _why; don't stop being generous - don't disappear without a trace.

chanux• 17 years ago

Loved his neat work why's poignant guide to ruby though I'm not a ruby guy. :(

But why he'd commit a virtual suicide like this?

brigleb• 17 years ago

Very sad. No more chunky bacon??

I invite everyone to enjoy a video I set to some of his music, and reflect on his priceless contributions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YReSQfSBz4k

duairc3• 17 years ago

Where did you find his music? I remember seeing on his Wikipedia article before that he made music, but I was able to find very little about it.

levinalex2• 17 years ago

i tried to build a torrent: http://tinyurl.com/ktrjs8 don't know if it actually works yet.

igorhvr• 17 years ago

Does anyone have a copy of all the source code he published?

Specifically, does anyone have a copy of his Potion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=425258) repository somewhere online?

netghost4• 17 years ago

Try here: http://github.com/adamsanderson/potion/tree/master There might be a more recent one, but that's within a week.

wmoxam• 17 years ago

http://github.com/wmoxam/potion/tree/master

_giu• 17 years ago

looks a little bit suspicious to me: http://twitpic.com/ehm2h (_why created a repository called "lol" 30 minutes ago)

timdorr• 17 years ago

Wrong. "why" created that account, which has only been a member since today. "_why" hasn't done anything.

mr_justin3• 17 years ago

_why's account on github has always been "why", presumably because github does not allow an account name to start with an underscore.

_why deleted his account and somebody snatched it up real quick

hbeaver• 17 years ago

I am very,very sad. He is one of the primary reasons I'm a ruby programmer too.

luckyland• 17 years ago

_why does as he wishes, and he has never seemed like the kind of person who lives with regret.

randrews2• 17 years ago

I had a copy of Potion cloned on my machine, so I stuck it on Github. If someone has a newer one, please post it, or let me pull from you or something: http://github.com/randrews/potion

_why had a lot of projects, we can probably preserve most of them just with people pushing stuff they had cloned.

carbon83• 17 years ago

This one has commits through Aug 11/12: http://github.com/adamsanderson/potion/tree/master

randrews2• 17 years ago

Just pulled it and updated mine. Thanks!

If nothing else, this is an excellent test of Git's distributed-self-healing goodness.

I really hope he comes back though.

rufugee• 17 years ago

Interestingly enough, even an interview of his has disappeared, while others on the site continue to work:

HN post re: inteview: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=483207 http://_why.usesthis.com/ http://usesthis.com

waferbaby• 17 years ago

sorry about that, i moved it to its own site.

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

Version 0.5 of _why's Poignant Guide to Ruby is still available on Rubyforge:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=183

mmaaxx3• 17 years ago

Maybe he just needs a break from the internet?

emartin24• 17 years ago

Don't assume that _why is the one removing his online identity...I've seen this happen with other people - and it was the work of a malicious hacker.

timinman6• 17 years ago

I want to believe this, but then I remembered denial is one of the first phases of grief.

bartwe• 17 years ago

_why and Zed walk into a formum, the matter - antimatter reaction destroys the net for Gigabytes around.

eapen• 17 years ago

My guess is that he got hired by an intelligence agency.

xoai• 17 years ago

That could be right! I thought so.

Arubis2• 17 years ago

At the risk of being a little insensitive, this is a very good argument in favor of DCVS's.

fogus• 17 years ago

Perhaps he's rebooting his online identity?

http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/

blasdel3• 17 years ago

That's just weird enough to be plausible -- there's pictures of the Shoes shoes, kitties, rainbows, needlepoint, and Tom Cruise giving a piggy back ride.

DTrejo• 17 years ago

http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/about.html

zacharypinter• 17 years ago

I don't think Jonathan Paul Gillette is _why.

This site (linked to earlier in the thread) includes a picture of Jonathan Paul Gillette: http://www.uu.edu/centers/faculty/faculty/new/0607newfaculty...

The guy pictured on the faculty page matches the piggyback photo on http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/. Definitely not _why.

crnixon• 17 years ago

It'd be a good idea to collect links to backups of his various projects. Does anyone have a copy of Hobix or Potion laying around?

calcnerd256• 17 years ago

Maybe his disappearance is an art piece about how things can or cannot be erased from the 'net.

pfisch• 17 years ago

His job could have a stipulation in the contract that they own everything he creates. Wouldn't that make him potentially civilly liable for his open source contributions, as well as these books and other things he has made.

kjell• 17 years ago

"this girl at the pool is draggin such a stack of foam noodles it’s like she’s a little beaver going to dam up the diving board"

from _why's twitter, 8/12/09.

I hope the guy surfaces somewhere soon. One of the most outwardly joyful computer folks I've ever seen.

mrflip2• 17 years ago

I've set up a mirror of re-forks of his repos at

http://github.com/whymirror

This isn't anything super-scientific, I just forked the first google hit for site:github.com "fork of why/THISREPO" -- http://bit.ly/whyrepo

Still missing: greg rb_parse_args skistrap processor chirrup

ssn• 17 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://whytheluckystiff.net/

cpach5• 17 years ago

If anyone's about to mirror the stuff on his web sites, it might be wise to act quickly. Wayback Machine always checks the current robots.txt for a given domain, so it's possible to block files that have already been archived.

datums• 17 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EPzGpwnekg&feature=relat... Sounds like him.

emullet• 17 years ago

A guy I know used to work at Inetz. Here's a small chat exerpt from a few minutes ago... Confirmation that the guy that worked at Inetz is _why. Perhaps take it with a grain of salt.

emullet you worked at Inetz right?

friend 4:20 yeah

emullet 4:20 You work with a guy named Jonathan Gillette ?

friend 4:21 not allowed to answer that

emullet 4:21 lol why do you say that?

friend 4:21 but I've heard that a lot of his stuff "disappeared" today

emullet 4:21 ya you know whats up?

friend 4:21 nope

emullet 4:21 its very odd kinda cool he worked with you

yooshooa• 17 years ago

in pursuit of this new knowledge

i have discovered that every... easily accessible (so far)... copy of his poignant guide to ruby

has disappeared as well

what an eff you

i'm pretty dissapointed.

if anyone has a copy, i would love to talk... i'm certainly the intended audience.

yooshooa@yahoo

tcoffeep5• 17 years ago

I have a pdf that has up to chapter 6.

Mediafire link (is.gd'd) : http://is.gd/2p1Jd

mrflip2• 17 years ago

http://github.com/whymirror/poignantguide/tree/master

rms2• 17 years ago

http://rubyforge.org/projects/poignant/

It was released under CC Attribution-ShareAlike so there is no reason for it to disappear.

avit2• 17 years ago

It's still out there: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/

lylo• 17 years ago

it's the mystique, the razzle dazzle, the enigma. his fabulous body of work will live on, restored, uploaded and duplicated by hundreds of devotees and admirers. he'll be reincarnated. a _why by any other name would still smell as sweet. it's better to burn out than to fade away. ladies and gentlemen, elvis has left the building.

gourneau• 17 years ago

"This is the true joy in life ... being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy ... I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing on to future generations."

-- George Bernard Shaw

http://tr.im/why_burn

I lament the departure of _why. However, it looks like his flame will continue to live on, even if he would have hoped otherwise. Thanks _why

blhack• 17 years ago

I'm sure this comment will get lost in all the clutter, but:

I, up until today, didn't give two shits about ruby. I know that I had heard of this craaazzzyyyy "Ruby on Rails" jazz from about a year ago, and I know that people talked about it all the time, but I grabbed onto my python, looked the other way, and called it good.

Now, I want to learn ruby...

This guy seemed like he was all about teaching people Ruby, perhaps this was an attention grab?

aslakhellesoy• 17 years ago

A few years back I read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Somewhere in the middle of the book someone says "why the lucky stiff!"

Does anyone know what that means?

tcoffeep5• 17 years ago

I read about that on Wikipedia. I've never read the book, though. There's just something about text and paper that doesn't agree with my stomach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Why_the_lucky_stiff#Real_n...

lambdajones• 17 years ago

it means why is probably in a remote, hidden mountain village in Colorado.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

'stiff' is 30s slang for a working class person (as in 'working stiff'). This would be like saying 'he really lucked out!' today - a mixture of admiration and mild jealousy for someone's (possibly unearned) good fortune.

timinman6• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure stiff is slang for dead person, but it gets used more generally than that, for example: 'working stiff', a working person nothing going for him.

kallistec• 17 years ago

internet/_why #=> SystemStackError: stack level too deep

I remember reading on his twitter something like, "a caller asks: should I use hpricot or nokogiri? If you're not me, use nokogiri. If you're me, then stop being me"

thorn0• 17 years ago

Jeff Yates' disappearance is the similar case. He is JavaScript developer, books author and creator of PBWizard, one of the very first WYSIWYG editors. He had site pbwizard.com with many articles. However only one of these article can be found in web today (http://www.dotvoid.com/2001/03/using-the-range-object-in-moz...).

ddemchuk2• 17 years ago

I would love to see _why come back as _whynot

elliottcable2• 17 years ago

Good riddance.

elliottcable2• 17 years ago

Of course, downvote me because I’m not mourning somebody who, if you’ll notice, isn’t dead /-:

chipotlecoyote• 17 years ago

I'm betting they're downvoting you because your comment was kind of douchey. It's okay not to be concerned about Why's abrupt disappearance from online-ness, but slamming other people for being concerned about it? And "good riddance?" Really?

jpteti• 17 years ago

His GitHub account is back! http://github.com/why

revyver• 17 years ago

It's supposedly a placeholder for when he comes back.

noodle2• 17 years ago

i couldn't help but think of this exchange when i saw the _why incident:

- Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?

- Then what died? Who are you mourning?

- A point of view.

Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in Sandman: The Wake

(yes i'm double posting this, i feel that it is also appropriate here in the original thread)

123581321345589• 17 years ago

A traceroute to whytheluckystiff.com ends with http://cewki.com , which contains a link to this thread.

_why, you inspired me to be a developer.

Action• 17 years ago

What happened to him? Has he got any problems?

doki_pen4• 17 years ago

A clue: http://away.autognosis.org/

levinalex2• 17 years ago

here's two more videos from _why from his OSCON 2005 talk: http://bit.ly/1atNHU ("Sinking Symphony" and "Foxes Tall and Small on Modules")

obelix74• 17 years ago

omg, where will I go for my hpricot documentation now?

avit2• 17 years ago

I feel compelled to dispatch an anonymous postcard to _why, just to say thanks. And to wish the best farewell. Maybe I'll find one with a furry animal on the front, like a lumberjack or something. Tomorrow.

You see, phoning seems rather creepy. And besides, I really don't have anything to ask him, or of him. He's taught us all so much already.

Yeah, a postcard seems best. Just a message in a bottle, a ping into the void. Naturally, the letter shall read in a language known well among those he has enlightened.

Thanks, old friend.

hady_af• 17 years ago

I have an opinion I would like to share, from what am reading online, it seems that his last tweet was a bit angry at the programming world, us in a more specific term. Us developers whom have learned so much from him... What I feel is that it's like an anger wave inside him, that like "alright, people are not thankful for what I do, let's see what happens when everything goes down... now what will they do without me" dunno, but I cannot find an explanation of why even his source codes are down.. really hope he's blessed by god somewhere feeling better and if that's the case, being angry at us, hope he feels better soon. guys I think maybe we should do him a website, you know like a call for his return, who's with me?

edibot42• 17 years ago

I am

devynci6• 17 years ago

I'm with ya too :)

frankjones• 17 years ago

Found this _why's tweet from Google's cache. I'm not quite sure what this is about - and everybody might have already seen this, but here goes:

"burying myself feet first in the woods with the hope that this will lead to a career as a much beloved and sought after mouth-under-a-rock."

Link to Google's cached _why Twitter page: http://bit.ly/2h5PKy

chaelus2• 17 years ago

I'm afraid my impression of _why from what I've read lately is that he wasn't exactly happy. Adding to that.. has anyone read the last few pages of chapter 6 of his guide recently? Apparently his sister was drinking and got alcohol poisoning or might have been on drugs. All in all it seems he was deeply troubled by this and by his deteriorating relationship to his sister. When did he write this and is this stuff about his sister true? I really, really hope it isn't and that he or his sister didn't do something tragic.

devynci6• 17 years ago

I think that was all a joke. He likes to make up stories, you see.

chaelus2• 17 years ago

Well thats the problem with people who tell lots of stories isn't it? You can never tell if a story is actually true or not.. At least it does seem to me to be a remarkably depressing section in an otherwise fun and quirky book.

yaskall• 17 years ago

I keep asking myself: "Why _why?" and "_why, why?" and "Why _why, _why?" and "_why, why, why, why!?" and "_why, why, _why, why..."...

devynci6• 17 years ago

http://stores.lulu.com/_why is gone too. :( Man, he really went to town!

devynci6• 17 years ago

Hey everyone! _why the lucky stiff's Flickr account still exists! http://www.flickr.com/photos/_why

Either he or the hackers or whoever is responsible for this forgot about his Flickr account.

teeja• 17 years ago

Guess he wants to avoid the Mitnick Dilemma?

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/08/kevin-mitnick...

Zoasterboy• 17 years ago

Why's dead. Ruby lives on.

sunaku• 17 years ago

_why's actions remind me of a quote from Hagakure:

"In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things." (emphasis added)

Rest in peace, _why! You were but a hero, but now you are a legend.

_why is no more

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