Eulogy to _why

http://ejohn.org/blog/eulogy-to-_why/

by jcsalterego • 17 years ago

318 92 17 years ago

ejohn.org

kwamenum862• 17 years ago

Can't even access that page. Is the site being hammered with traffic? ejohn.org is down as well.

eli• 17 years ago

try http://ejohn.org.nyud.net/blog/eulogy-to-_why/

jeresig3• 17 years ago

Sorry, getting absolutely destroyed. I've replaced the blog post with a static HTML page for the time being, hopefully that helps.

kwamenum862• 17 years ago

Thanks. It was a really enlightening post. That song he made was actually quite impressive for what was presumably just a hobby.

boundlessdreamz5• 17 years ago

http://www.manu-j.com/downloads/site/_why.html Copy of the text if you can't access ejohn.org

boundlessdreamz5• 17 years ago

Though it would be considered a bit rude by many, somewhere I understand the philosophy of _why. It would be better to kill something fast than watch it wither away and die.[especially when they are close to your heart]. if _why had left the code in place, it might have withered [like say mongrel]

This post and zed shaw's tweets on the same subject are so stark in contrast.I think I finally understand why zed shaw is so unloved by many. It is because of lack of respect for someone else's choices.

Edit: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412128128

_why preached "peace & love" and "ruby's nice" and then the second he's outed he rips down gear people depend on. He's a dick.

http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html

"I believe that whatever the author wants to do with his or her works is their right. They wrote it, despite everyone telling them it wouldn’t work. They slaved over it rather than going out with friends. They debugged it, and wrote documentation for it so everyone else could use it. They may have even spent a part of their time promoting it and helping people with it. All for free, and for whatever reason they choose."

unalone5• 17 years ago

There're a lot of jokes making _why and Zed out to be foils today, and in a lot of ways they're true.

Zed's very no-nonsense. He's spent a lot of time manufacturing an image of himself. He lets himself get carried away and angry and he's been searching for a community he likes, butting heads all the way.

_why, on the other hand, was truly bizarre. I never got into his blog, for instance, because it seemed frequently nonsensical and more than a little rambling. Despite that (or, more likely, because of it), he seemed almost always happy with whatever it was he did. I only ever really got into TryRuby and his Poignant Guide, but they were the only two guides to programming I've played with. There was a giddiness in his work that I haven't found in other coding. It's comparable to the moods of artists in other fields.

Zed's argument against _why is that what he did was impractical and unproductive. That's what made _why as a persona, though: Zed is a hacker, _why was more of an artist, pretenses and unreliability and all. It's left-brained versus right-brained; it's also why there's a definite rift between the people who like _why and the people who think the guy was raving mad and immature.

boundlessdreamz5• 17 years ago

Zed Shaw(and many others) may not agree with what _why did but what _why did was well within his rights and hence there is no reason to disrespect him. What disappoints me is that Zed shaw(and some in the original thread) quickly declaring _why a dick. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it - Voltaire". Where is that spirit ?

kiba• 17 years ago

From what I heard, people said _why is a machine that constantly crank out code.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

> "the people who think the guy was raving mad and immature."

haha. which one are you talking about?

TFrancis• 17 years ago

Practicing yoga is the only requirement to be a yogi. Hacking is much the same way. We all share similar goals but our practices are always intensely personal. If you're practiced enough you know that what you consider important and what you consider progress continuously changes. Thus we don't judge someone else or their practice but appreciate the opportunity to practice with them. Without question both Zed Shaw and _why have hacked. I think it's important to appreciate many qualities of both without needing to apply labels to either.

Namaste

zby• 17 years ago

I don't remember to ever read _why's texts or interact with him in any other way - but what you write here, seem close in a way, even if the very opposite in other ways, to the story of Netochka Nezvanova (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?NetochkaNezvanova). By they way I've already posted that link as a story here.

einarvollset• 17 years ago

Now wouldn't it be hilarious if Zed Shaw and _why were the same person? I know, they're not, but damn..

kenshi• 17 years ago

...especially if they were the same person in a Fight Club kind of way. Zed sleeps and _why comes out to play... or vice versa.

bballant• 17 years ago

Good work (not necessarily "hard work" ;-)) pointing out Zed's hypocrisy.

I love how _why considered code art. I loved it when he wrote out his code by hand and animated the background of the text. It made the code seem magical, which it sometimes is.

pyre6• 17 years ago

Parsing through that led me to this: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/

Which is what Zed is referring to when he says "the second he's outed."

jcl• 17 years ago

...which is odd, since it was hardly the "second he's outed". The post was made over a month ago. We have no guarantee the post and his disappearance are actually related.

Curiously, an old Wikipedia edit identifies the same place of employment, three years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_the_lucky_stif...

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

There's more to Zed's response than that. Consider the following:

http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414550229

"Actually, I didn't see a lot of sympathy from _why when I was going through similar tough times. In fact, the inverse."

And: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414567310

"Totally jealous, I wish I could leave the ghetto as completely. :-)"

What comes off as gruffness, I think, overlies a complex substratum of hurt and ambivalence.

unalone5• 17 years ago

Of course. Zed's a complex human being like all of us. He and _why have a history. I recall _why delivered a pretty twisted put-down to Zed once, the sort where you were more confused than hurt. And they both had a unique position in the RoR community.

Doesn't change the fact that Zed's cursing out _why and acting like a jerk. He's not just being a jerk, but he is being a jerk.

tptacek• 17 years ago

If you're wondering why Zed Shaw is always at the top of HN whenever he blogs about his least favorite kind of steak sauce, this is why. He writes some random, moronic, offensive comment on Twitter, and we can't shut up about it. There ought to be a word for this tactic he's using. I think I'll coin one. Zed Shaw is a message board goblin. He's goblining you.

shib71• 17 years ago

The next stage in Troll evolution: from polluting other people's discussions to creating negative meme's.

stcredzero3• 17 years ago

They wrote it, despite everyone telling them it wouldn’t work.

Why are we programmers, as a group, so negative? When Ernest Lawrence was going on-and-on about the Cyclotron, other physicists got tired of him, but they told him to get off his ass and build it, not that he was an ignorant git and it wouldn't work. Why is it that every interesting idea in programming is met by someone saying it wouldn't work with the supporting logic inversely proportional to the nastiness of the tone?

michaelneale• 17 years ago

I would deeply love to know the answer to that question. And why do I feel so angry about thing like that?

sunir• 17 years ago

I suspect it's because programming is an intense meritocracy, but a meritocracy governed by the intense subjectiveness of how smart your peers think you are rather than some more objective criterion like published papers or citations.

Therefore, to some programmers, if someone else is likely to do something more brilliant than you, it's motivating to stop them. Especially so, since if you are successful in stopping them, your own perceived merit goes up as the smarter dog in the room.

This game is reinforced by the game of karma on many programmer discussion sites. I have to admit, I succomb, as I want my karma to cross 200 so I can downvote. It's a stupid goal, but my ego is prone to it.

P.S. Please note that science is also prone to this behaviour, and programming and science have the same solution to the problem: actually building a verifiable { experiment / correct theorem / more efficient algorithm }.

cf. Science in Action by Bruno Latour (1987), which I tried to summarize on http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SocialConstructionOfScie...

dtf• 17 years ago

What, the guy made songs too? Incredible.

unalone5• 17 years ago

Beyond the one John links to, here's a YT compilation of three others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YReSQfSBz4k

He's unpolished, but his songs are whimsical and his instrumentation is ridiculous. I didn't know he had an album. I really want it.

carbon84• 17 years ago

The soundtrack is on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20071018035725/poignantguide.net/...

lr• 17 years ago

There are a lot of very arty people who are programmers. Just look at the people who started Pixar (and I am not just talking about Steve, but he definitely qualifies). They were scientists (PhDs) and they loved art, and using the computer to generate it. And in those days, that meant knowing how to code.

luigi• 17 years ago

Consider taking 31 minutes to watch _why speak at the ART && CODE Symposium from a few months back:

http://www.vimeo.com/5047563

I'm planning to make a modern version of Logo (yeah, with the turtle) using Shoes.

mpk• 17 years ago

Thanks for that, John. A very eloquent eulogy that captures how I perceived _why to be.

_pius• 17 years ago

What a beautiful piece of writing.

raju• 17 years ago

Thank you John. This was truly a beautiful tribute to a great hacker.

asdlfj2sd33• 17 years ago

Using the world "eulogy" makes me very uncomfortable.

enneff• 17 years ago

Why? Do you have some issue with death?

gojomo2• 17 years ago

Speaking of a still-alive person as if they were dead is a reasonable taboo. To do so casually creates a lot of potential for damaging misunderstandings.

gruseom• 17 years ago

What a lot of puerile drama.

lux2• 17 years ago

This reminds me of that story about people disappearing in real life. _why had some really cool projects. It makes a little more sense looking at him as an "artist" I guess, but aren't hackers sort of artists too? I always thought the dichotomy was a little artificial myself...

Although, hackers are associated with more utilitarianism and art isn't always functional. Sometimes hacking is for the sake of hacking though, just like art.

iamwil• 17 years ago

Wasn't there recently that story on front page of HN about disappearing completely? Maybe _why got the idea to disappear from the article.

lux2• 17 years ago

This made me think of that one too actually. Kind of an intriguing concept... there's almost something romantic about the idea of escape, something artistic...

_giu• 17 years ago

_why really deserves this tribute! he created great things and I always liked _why's idea of bringing programming to a wider audience (especially children). reading through john's post and thinking about the mystic (and very smart) person _why was, I'm really sad about the fact that he disappeared online!

perezd• 17 years ago

I turned the eulogy into a Caring Candle: http://www.caring.com/caring-candles/loss-of-programming-ico...

compay• 17 years ago

WAIT just a minute... the dude took down a bunch of domains and accounts TODAY. Isn't this a tad premature for a eulogy? Maybe we ought to wait until we find out what happened, and what _why intends to do before going into "mourning."

jeresig3• 17 years ago

The way I figure it the "worst case" is that his account(s) were hacked and that he brings everything back online. In that case he now has a letter, from me, letting him know how much I appreciate him and his work. Frankly, I'm long overdue for writing one, anyway.

algorias• 17 years ago

Wikipedia has been updated, so it must be true!

lowdown• 17 years ago

I'm really sad for purely selfish reasons. My 11 year old really enjoyed hackety-hack up to the point that it worked. Likely it won't be finished now, which is a shame because it was a really great tool for introducing kids...

wsprague• 17 years ago

God bless him for giving himself (grudgingly?) to the public, and god bless him for ending his public life when we all remember him so fondly.

I must admit that he wasn't on my radar until now, though I read his guide to Ruby, but now I love him.

gdp7• 17 years ago

Is it just me, or does the Ruby community go in for cults of personality considerably more than others?

wynand• 17 years ago

Perhaps, although I don't think that to be the case here.

For me, the _why persona was a little beacon that radiated the message: "you can make cool stuff and have fun regardless of your circumstances". That's a nice contrast to the dreariness of so much of the IT world on the one hand and the (often justified, but still depressing) rants about the evils of the IT world on the other hand.

gdp7• 17 years ago

But the tone of this entire thread is suggesting that somebody who wrote a bit of Ruby code is some sort of creative visionary! He may be a very talented programmer, but let's keep things in proportion. This idea that someone can be a big star in the Ruby world for doing not-very-much is a bit bizarre to me.

I'm reading this as a complete outsider, and trying to find the source of this level of adulation is difficult at best. I assume it's a community-centric thing, where someone outside of the community wouldn't "get it". It all just seems so bizarrely self-congratulatory.

And what do you mean "regardless of your circumstances"? What do we know about his circumstances that would convey that message?

Estragon• 17 years ago

Come on, they've got nothing on perl.

gdp7• 17 years ago

You think? I can't say I really engage with either community, but purely as an outsider, it appears that anybody who has written any software in Ruby and published it ends up with a minor cult of celebrity, with legions of worshippers being sycophantic.

OK, I could be overstating it a little, but I reckon there are people in the Ruby community who could tell me what DHH had for breakfast.

Perl seems to focus its love and attention on Larry Wall himself, for the most part.

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

A stray point, but it's a bit unfair to both Buddhism and deconstruction to write "After a mandala has been constructed - and displayed - it is ceremoniously deconstructed". Actually, it's swept up with a small broom, and then dumped in a river, which is something different altogether.

ananthrk• 17 years ago

John's comparison of _why's work to sand mandala is very poignant and apt!

csbartus• 17 years ago

_why is experimenting an identity change; probably he is online again (in a new domain?) with a new ID and reading now about his own 'funeral'.

ErrantX3• 17 years ago

Assuming this is a scratch of his identity (and not a hack) I have a grudging respect for it.

Not because he killed all his sites and code but because that's possibly the last we will ever hear! Too often do high profile programmers have a "hissy", delete stuff and then a few hours later make loud proclamations about why they left and who was being a dick for XYZ reasons (and how it is their fault)

Kudos for having the balls to just switch off I suppose.

(on the subject of it being a "dickish" move; it's not one I agree with or one I would take BUT I suppose it's possible he reasoned that copies of his code are around and anything seriously useful would be recoverable. The damage isn't too great. But the statement of removing it all is huge. That's it - no more contact ever).

With nothing to maintain or a way to be contacted he can just get away from everything that was bothering him (and it is clear stuff was bothering him). Assuming his actions are not more drastic (I cant believe NO ONE knows enough about him to contact him in some way) than this then perhaps in 6 months, a year he might return and carry on :)

To paraphrase a great film - lets at least end it with hope;

Hope guides me, that is what gets me through the day and the night. The hope that after you're gone from my sight, it will not be the last time that I look upon you.

Hopefully he'll be back.

AndrewO2• 17 years ago

Oh no! Now how will I break my trainees' brains by having them unravel Camping?!

PabloPicasso• 17 years ago

_why's writing was incomprehensible, and his code was just as bad. Good riddance. Unless he's dead, in which case Oh, the humanity.

Eulogy to _why

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