_why is no more (opens in new tab)

I just noticed that _why apparently deleted his twitter account. I then found that that wasn't all he deleted:

http://twitter.com/_why http://github.com/why http://whytheluckystiff.net/ http://poignantguide.net/ http://hackety.org/ http://shoooes.net/

All disappeared...

For those who don't know who I'm talking about: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff

_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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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?

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 :)

_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.

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

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

_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.

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

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

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

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.

Perhaps he's rebooting his online identity?

http://www.jonathanpaulgillette.com/

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.

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

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.

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

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. :-(

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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

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

"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

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

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?

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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...).

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

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

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)

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.

camping 4eva!

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"

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

Thanks for all the fish, _why!

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?

_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.

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?

Guess he wants to avoid the Mitnick Dilemma?

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

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

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

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?

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

Maybe he just needs a break from the internet?

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

:( A sad day.

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

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")

What happened to him? Has he got any problems?

Why's dead. Ruby lives on.

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

I would love to see _why come back as _whynot

Good riddance.