You can use my name (why the lucky stiff) and the date of
publication (feb 16, 2004 - present) as frequently in your
studies as you wish, so long as you keep your grade point
average up and you diversify your elective credits with a
broad portfolio of subjects. I am specifically hoping you
will bask in the study of 1930s Russian absurdist
literature. Oberiu is the name of the movement.
I will never forget you.
_why really kills that here.
I'm never sure if there's a point to what he's writing, if he's playing a joke on people, or if he's playing a character, or if he's being totally and completely honest in an unusual way.
I'm not sure if I'm the joke, he's the joke, or if we're sharing a joke.
Or if it's not a joke at all and I'm just too stupid to understand.
It's really neat.
A lot of people have tried to dissect this way too far and have gotten extremely heated in the process. I would argue that they haven't spent enough time dealing with high art. The artist might have a statement they're making with a certain piece, but ultimately that's unimportant next to what you take away from it. If this speaks to you, if this is meaningful to you, then that is the point. The reaction you take away is precisely what it is, and there's no point in arguing about it - but if you wish to share and revel in the experience, let's collectively appreciate it in that way.
I for one found it enthralling. Part of it I know had to do with nostalgia, as I actually was first interested in programming in part by his Poignant guide. The first third or so of the book really reflected that writing style, and I loved it. As it progressed, it got heavier and heavier, and I'm still not sure I understand the allegory he was painting, but the sense I got from it was very clear to me. Some have suggested that it was in reference to his experience in the startup world, and I can buy that, but I feel like there was something there that I probably won't grasp until I wake up in the middle of the night tonight thinking about it.
Thanks for telling us one more story _why, wether it's your last or not, I enjoyed it.
I think the sense of sensitivity you feel through his writing adds to that, too. If he's making a joke of you, it's a gentle one. Kind of the yin to Zed Shaw's yang.
- The thematic element of wishing that the reader not follow the "references" in the work--the iPhone smackdown, and later more clearly with the SACRED CLOWNS--leading later namedrops to pass without question. (In a strange way, it almost feels like the urge to look them up was similar to an urge to vomit: it has passed, and now I feel better.)
- Slipping into Inform 7 to actually tell a story. I almost wanted to paste it into an interpreter--it's valid Inform code--but it's more powerful as narrative, and more powerful in the narrative because of its structure. In the moment where he lost momentum and looked around for a next step, the world "branched out" into a space composed of choices. This is the one more little attempt to show people what "code as art" can mean.
- The realization that (possible spoilers) the last third of the book is the story of how he found himself working at a start-up. His reactions in-narrative mirror his comment earlier in the work that he's "learning to get over his hatred of entrepreneurs."
---
On the whole, a very coherent story. If you're having trouble making sense of it, make sure to interpret all the "deaths" in the story as death of identity, rather than physical death. Losing a job is death; breaking the social contract of a character is death; etc.
And now, the site is down, and the _why identity is dead once more.
(And on a melancholic, perhaps overly-personal note: I do so wish that I could be friends with that man. Not the identity, just the man. Talking about The Happening would be fine.)
Speaking purely for myself, the absurdist nature of _why's work is part of the fun. The feeling of being a little bit confused but enjoying the moment is why I find programming interesting in the first place.
Keep up the great work _why!
I read through the book because I figured there'd be something insightful, interesting, or explanatory in there. There basically isn't. If it's just supposed to be art -- some kind of odd, disjointed story for its own sake -- then at least that's something, even if I didn't really care much for it.
I do like some of the presentation. The print queue thing is clever, and the variety of scans/handwriting/printing in the work, where it's not a hindrance to reading, is fun (I can see that the hindrance is part of the work, but it still comes off as obnoxious to me).
Still, it leaves me wondering: Why do people care about this? It's some guy that believed he wasn't a good programmer, stopped programming, went AWOL from the internet, was happy about it, and then apparently wrote some sort of strange fiction. OK, whatever floats your boat, but usually these fads pass. This one just won't go away, even though going away is exactly what the author did (or, arguably, is continuously failing to do).
Do those of you getting high on this see it as some kind of existential statement or puzzle? I think way too much is being read into the whole thing.
To certain extent I think remaining anonymous forces you to be humble, which I think can be a good thing, but damn people want to put a name to everything.
EDIT: I suspect some people at Valve will at least know who he really is.
In fact, I find it quite sad to see how he refers to his code - I admire a lot of what he did. Sure, a lot of it was not great engineering, but it was artful. E.g. Camping is fantastic to read, both for itself and as a sort of practical demonstration of how bloated many frameworks are. It's not that most people would ever have a good reason to use Camping as their web framework, but that to me is besides the point.
That said, part of it this whole thing also does seem to be driven by (hurt) pride.
I hope he sticks with the writing, though - so far I'm halfway through the PDF, and I love it.
Anyway, getting back to the topic - I don't know about his strength as a programmer, but I think we could all learn from him as a community leader. Anonymous leader, rallied a lot of people around him (a few other coders, a lot of testers, a TON of contributors), gave Dota a rhythm, a release flow that made Dota huge. You'd play the game knowing that game crashing bugs would be fixed ASAP, that game play balance issues would be resolved, that the next version would make everything just BETTER.
A ton of dedication and hard work didn't hurt either :)
Yes, he wrote some Ruby code, but the code was his least important contribution.
_why was the first person to actually create art around and about software. Others before him have used software as a tool in their artistic process, but to my knowledge no one has ever taken coding as the subject of a performance art so intricate and beautiful as the character whytheluckystiff. All his scripts, all his writings, even all his quirky animations and songs show a love and passion for coding as a recreational activity that defies our conventional beliefs about software as a craft & industry.
We often hear people in this community talk about elegant code, beautiful code, even code as art. But all these sentiments usually mean art in the form of craftsmanship: We want a shorter way to write the same web app, a more expressive way to create our tests, a more concise DSL for data manipulation. While all of these are worthy goals, they are only a tiny, tiny fraction of what coding really is or at least could be. If something doesn't help us build our MVP faster, it's useless to us. Isn't there more to software than that? Sure, there are people focusing on more esoteric stuff in their free time, writing their own Lisps, exploring different data structures, etc. But all of these activities still follow the same tenets: More efficient is better, smaller is better, better is beautiful. We are in love with perfection and purity, because that is what we (necessarily) strive for in our daily work.
_why was different.
Similar to how the decadent and symbolist movements of the late 19th century popularized "Art for Art's sake", _why devoted his whole opus to "Code for Code's sake". His work as a "freelancer professor" showed how much he cared about children learning programming as an enjoyable activity, not as a way to increase the supply of professional programmers. He also satirized our obsession with exactly this professionalism that tends to creep into our thinking and permeates our culture. In short, he used his character to show us aspects of software that were largely underrepresented or ignored in most mainstream discussions.
Personally, reading the poignant guide was the first time I read a piece of code not to understand the code, but to understand a wonderful story. I still don't know how to program in Ruby, but that doesn't matter. In my opinion the poignant guide never really was about Ruby. It was a wonderfully quirky book that happened to be using Ruby as its language. _why's style is absolutely unique and reflects his approach to coding: It doesn't have to be (what we normally consider) beautiful or clean, but it nevertheless forms a great and intricate experience for the reader.
Similarly, today was the first time that I regretted not owning a printer. To see new pages suddenly arrive in the tray to form a crazy and beautiful story must have been magical. Even using only a virtual printer it was wonderful to read the new parts of the book as they arrived and this experience alone made it worthwhile for me. The content itself deserves more than just this quick HN comment though.
So, if you want to know why so many people seem to enjoy the works of _why, set aside some time and start to dig through his estate of old stuff. Don't try to find something useful, just let the whole strange collection sink in. As is often the case with art, the subjective experience is hard to put into words as it depends so much on your personal context and the context of the artwork. I have definitely done a shoddy job trying to describe what makes _why special for me, I am not even sure it can be adequately put into words. But if you like things that are absurd, sometimes useless, yet strangely beautiful, then take a closer look at this works.
Thank you for everything, _why.
--
A friend asked me to post this for him.
That's complete rubbish. But it probably is correct that he was the first person that created art around and about software that you are aware of.
There are a variety of cultures surrounding coding which, while somewhat diverse, still feel like somewhat of an echo chamber. You have the coding-for-startups culture, for one, and then you have people who are very invested in coding efficiency for the sake of coding efficiency. Both of these are healthy things to have exist, but they lead to a few very specific personality types dominating the landscape, and the result is that programming can seem very forbidding to people who don't match those sorts of identity. Heck, it can be forbidding to people who do match them. And you have little clusters of hobbyists here and there, but those clusters are easily overlooked by people who aren't searching for them.
The message I felt _why delivered with his work more than anything was that programming is fundamentally about more than code, or even about building. He tried to capture the emotions behind programming, the joy of learning to speak logic-driven languages, the humanity behind the hobby. And that humanity wasn't just bubbling whimsy and childlike wonder, though certainly _why dabbled in his fair share of that. There was a whole lot of insecurity, fear, worry that he might be throwing his life away on something impermanent and... not frivolous, because frivolity suggests a joy... neurotic, perhaps. Something that ultimately was consuming his time for no good purpose other than that he was locked into a pattern and couldn't see beyond it.
As somebody who's not a programmer, not even really a designer, that message struck me hard and deep, and _why sure seemed like the only person getting it out there in any big way – at least sometimes. In every other creative community I'm tangentially a part of, that dark pit of uncertainty tends to play a big role, not only in shaping the culture, but in shaping the creative direction of the medium. Musicians ask themselves whether the music they're playing is pointless, or whether the way they're making music is somehow harmful or runs contrary to the feelings they're trying to evoke. The result is that music changes. Directors ask all sorts of questions about how film should be made, how much a shot should be composed or "designed". Actors have a bevy of debates about artifice or insincerity in their roles. And writers... well, writers are about as fucked-up a category of people as they come, to the extent that the nicest and friendliest writers will cheerfully talk about how their entire life's work is probably futile and pointless.
_why wasn't a very good programmer, from what I hear, but his messiness was anathema to the kinds of cultures I usually associate with programming. He played games, and worried out loud, and made it seem like the secret to everything he did was that combination of caring/not caring that he was constantly oscillating between. The first thing that struck me about this print spool was how much it felt like a maturation of his message: not quite as whimsical, but silly in more nuanced ways, and more on-target serious about things he felt bothered by without feeling as impulsive as some of the things he wrote earlier. I love his Guide to Ruby, but there's certainly a bit of a mood-swinginess to it that this lacks.
First artist to work with software, or to comment on software? Hell no. But he felt, at times, like he was the only artist within this makeshift community that was really talking about how it felt, how it worked, what was so frustrating or nerve-wracking about it. That's why, I think, so many people treat _why like he was something special. It's probably also why so many other people don't get his appeal at all: for them, the culture that exists is exactly the one they want, and they find it irritating (if nothing else) that this "jester" was prancing about talking about non-relevant things.
In that case, could you please name a few artists that you believe did exactly that? I'm honestly interested in finding more of such art. But before you do, let me rephrase what I wrote above, because it's easy to misunderstand one short sentence (and I'm definitely guilty of not explaining very well what I mean): When I talk about art around and about software, I mean
a) art, i.e. not just something beautiful or well-crafted, but something which explores the human condition with an artistic purpose
b) around software, i.e. art that uses code as an integral part of the artwork (not just a painting about programming for example)
c) about software, i.e. it does not only use code to convey something, but code itself is the subject (Code for Code's sake)
I'm honestly not aware of anything that fits this description before _why's work (or at least of nothing that I would consider as art, and yes, that's somewhat hard to define). More concretely, I would exclude any works that simply praise mathematical / structural elegance, perfection or purity. Even though their creators may be artists and use artistic methods, I would hesitate to call such works "Art" with a capital A.
So, games/demos/processing sketches/audi-visual programming/software patterns/etc all do not fit these criteria. They may be very skillful works of art, but none of them tackle the subject of software & code at their core. While many focus on the mathematical perfection in code, _why focused on human imperfection and a creator's struggle while writing code.
Look at the contributions of the design patterns community for inspiration, people who have long strived to understand what Christopher Alexander's QWAN ("quality without a name") means to software. A good example is Patterns of Software [1], but also a lot of the C2 wiki has this spirit. Less off-the-wall than Why, but still trying to get at the soul of software.
1. http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Software-Tales-Community/dp/0...
I must be in the wrong "conventional", but I always thought everyone saw coding/hacking as a past time that they are lucky enough to be able to turn into money as well. Most if not all of top developers are hobbyists first and professionals second.
I say "failed" only in that it was surprising to me when I discovered numbers of developers with PhDs (or ABD) in purer fields of reasoned discovery or construction than I would have previously expected to be found writing, say, web application servers in the employ of a company not related to their field of study.
This is not really true. _why really embodied the 'ruby way' with his code through churning out solutions to all manner of complex tasks, consistently, quickly and with source code that was terse, readable and conceptually simple.
His contributions helped to validate ruby as a language for a lot of people and also helped the ruby community to define itself (I doubt you'd find a character like _why in the Python community for instance).
This is important, even if most of his source code is not used anymore (generally because when _why stopped updating it, nobody else really could or would).
That says something, although I'm not sure exactly what
the poignant guide never really was about Ruby. It was a wonderfully quirky book that happened to be using Ruby as its language
The amount of people who hate on _why around here for silly reasons is absurd. I often see people judge him by the standards you would use to judge an engineer (by which he fails miserably), but the correct standards are those you would judge an artist (by which he succeeds admirably).
Free combs on his website, apparently...
This saga is the height of self-indulgence.
I would provisionally explain all the hubbub around _why by the desire to flatter oneself that he can cross the gap between snow's two cultures (cf. apple).
Worth looking in the mirror with a comment like that.
It's a two headed beast, part science, part craft and _why lives deep in the craft territory. I think many of us here took time to realise that, that there's not just a right answer. When you realise it's a craft you want to be artistic with it, but you can only be with the output, who ever sees the input?
In my opinion _why neatly bridges that desire to be artistic with the invisible nature of the craftsmanship of code. It's an outlet that coding can't sate. And it happens by doing that he also taught and helped a lot of people.
Have you noticed how a lot of programmers are also musicians? I think that's part of the same desire.
I have spent a great deal of time interpreting, appraising, and creating works of art myself, and when I read the OP pdf, pretension and self-absorption ooze through every page. Hollow writing. Whimsical and heartfelt? I say arbitrary and jejune.
It's because the community that follows him is so desperate for an existence proof of the above mentioned combination (hey look, we're arty too!), that they neglect to really look at the situation objectively.
It looks like the title is "A-Power-Plant".
This leads me to believe that this section of the book has been printed out, laid on top of another book and scanned, so that it looks like a full book. Does anyone know what book it might be on top of?
_why is more of an artist instead of a programmer, he became popular, wanted to be anonymous (or at least his actions and code be more important than the person) but didn't really hide his identity. Once who he was became semi-popular (an actual name and, I believe, where he worked) he completely deleted his online presence. All of his code, etc. and just disappeared with no mention as to why he did it.
Now he is back and telling a story. I see it as a art project he is doing with his alternate identity. The character of _why is just interesting. First we have no idea why he disappeared, now we have no idea why he is reaching out to us.
In the end he could say "Drink More Ovaltine," disappear again, and I wouldn't be surprised.
I'd love to understand better how things like the overbled text were created. A photocopy of laser printed text, then scanned perhaps?
The font faces and spacing seem to have been chosen with care, can anyone names the various faces used? guess at the layout software?
Then the PCL is some kind of concatenation of page (bitmapped) images I guess?
The typed parts looked like a combination of a typewriter and a low-ish resolution inkjet to me.
And why not.
When someone blows you away with real ability, and does it while juggling apples and telling dirty jokes, without breaking a sweat, it (rightfully so) makes an impression.
Plus, BACON!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571387 shows the progress of figuring out what was happening.
Basically he was sending out print commands to print the book that is linked here.
Can you add that to the top or bottom of each page?
It's getting way out of control, quality of the network exponentially deteriorating, and far too much blatant disrespect without regard, perpetuating the same cycles of melancholia for any of those individuals who are genuinely interested in understanding.
For those who feel the need to be correct, the need to correct, the need to justify, the need to express their own opinions on behalf of the though of an other, for those who have yet to understand that they as themselves are not the constitution of thought of all of those who are an other independent of the self, for those who simply cannot simply recognize any/all realizations, for those who require conclusions, for those who wish to change the order of the world, for those who cannot be bothered with interaction that may oppose their own desire, etc., please leave this network. Please. I beg of you to leave. I beg of you to leave and return when you've lost the ability to use express your opinion in the forefront of others, when you've come to understand that every interact between your self and an other affects the experience and understanding of others, when you've come to understand, when you've learned to listen, when you've learned to reason, when you've learned your own language, when you've learned your own self, and finally, when you've learned an other relatively independent of others in relation to your selves.
The amount of hatred in the world is enough to drive anyone insane, why bring it to a network full of though-thirsty individuals who simply wish to share other understands?
I may be delusional in my expression of cordiality, though I only wish that this madness stops.
Why I have even bothered to make an account to share my own realization? The network is unique in its own right, and very difficult to find such a large group of like-minds. The more I visit, the further such ideals deviate from the truth, and it's disturbing. Quite a lot of this is clearly addressed in _why's seemingly random queue, but that's not the point. The point is [TL;DR;DC;WC;] Your opinions are going to change. If they don't, you're likely cheating yourself, and respectively others. Please find it in your minds to enjoy the thought of one another.
----
For those of you on your high-horse of supreme divinity and fortitude, I sincerely hope you come find your self humbled by your self.
Kind regards, <Let's pretend it matters>
_why could make one hell of a kickstarter, if he wanted to.
I hope he's okay.
is there anywhere any explanatory review of this?
