Oh for sure. I wasn’t being super clear: I was interviewed for this article. So not just about him leaving, which you’re right that’s even older, but just like, this article specifically.
I was already into Ruby and in the process of migrating my company to it when I first heart about _why.
It would be wrong to say that he and his works were what drew me to Ruby. But they were absolutely what drew me back into the wild, chaotic, artistic side of coding. What was beginning to become just a day-job was suddenly full of magic again. It was truly touching to be reminded that one’s creative works – the non-code stuff, even if it’s drawn strangely, or oozes with a personal style that isn’t quite polished or mainstream – can brighten someone’s day and bring meaning back into their work.
So y’know, I don’t know if _why is reading these things anymore. He probably isn’t, probably got a little tired from being constantly held aloft as some kind of superhuman. I would. But I appreciate him, and I hope he’s well.
It’s tough, because you could ask that about any of his projects, even at the time. He had a brilliant mind and a real knack for generating excitement, but not a lot of follow-through on any one project, no particular desire for community-building, and I would not describe his code as “long term maintenance” oriented. He was proudly showing us the toys he had built himself. And just doing what he did made space for so many other people to treat software as art. In retrospect it’s a wonder that he went so hard for so long without burning out.
But Shoes was cool! Potion was cool! Camping was cool! Bloopsaphone was cool! CLOSURE made people’s hair stand up! Glad he was around when he was around.
I think I understand what you’re saying, but I actually think _why did build community in a very different way and with a different objective. I think he wanted to show us that computing with Ruby would be fun and economical for ourselves. I don’t think he made a distinction between users, developers and maintainers; I think “copy and paste this code and modify it for you” would not have offended him at all, it would have just added to the crazy tumult. I don’t think he wanted to set up a team of developers facing a world of potential users, with mutual responsibilities and a social contract. But I think he absolutely built the Ruby community by attracting a mass of people who were there to play and have fun and were much less serious than other communities. He did more for Ruby by being himself than he could possibly have done by, say, investing all his energy into Shoes or Camping or Hobix (my favorite).
When he was outed and left the community, my interest in Ruby started waning too, because it just killed the magic. I still miss him. Whoever it was that outed him did the world a huge disservice.
You’re absolutely correct; I should have phrased it better. _why never exhibited a desire to grow communities around his own projects, but his support for the Ruby community and programming community in general, inviting people into the fun, was stellar.
I attended a talk that toured the Camping codebase at RubyConf 2024 last week (staff says “about 3-5 weeks before we get all of the videos uploaded to our YouTube”). I was unexpectedly nostalgic for when Ruby style had more perlisms. I don’t want to maintain a codebase in that style, but I hadn’t realized how strongly the community had moved away from it until being reminded.
I honestly believe that a lot of current community practices and preferred styles is off-balance between “code density” and “nice [bureaucratic] structure.” Like a pendulum that went from “we can pack everything in one line” extremity to its opposite of “you can’t even start writing code before nesting it into four modules and splitting into three methods by layers” (I am exaggerating, obviously).
What brought me to Ruby a long time ago I later reflected upon as its “closeness to thought,” i.e. the amount of words and phrases and their structure when thinking about the problem can be mapped very closely into Ruby. Its “linguistic” characteristics, if you will (and that’s the main good Perl legacy, not hard-to-memoize $,-variables); while the current generation (of community thought) is more inclined towards Java-like “architecture-first” thinking. Not a bad thing per se, just further from what I cherish in Ruby.
Yeah… I have once looked forward to Shoes and HacketyHack development and even participated a bit (mostly in comments/discussions — _why was extremely nice and fun to discuss wild things with).
BTW, there is a recent attempt to revive Shoes, based on WebView, called scarpe. Haven’t looked into it much, but the lead developer behind the project is a cool person, too.
It’s a GUI library for Ruby, if I remember right. Combined with Hackety Hack, it was a neat and fun way to make GUI applications with Ruby. It’s one of the things that got me into the field.
Yeah, it was super simple, and incredibly useful for throwing together quick and dirty forms. I loved it so much, but after _why disappeared, it went unmaintained for quite a while, and really lost momentum. It’s still out there, but I don’t think it’s nearly what it could have been.
This was my understanding, yes. I recall a lot of hunting, e.g. on HN, which traced who he really was. The pseudonym was just an assumed persona which he dropped, and then moved on.
I ran into another famous vanished Internet personality from this era. He went dark and offline 10+ years ago and has slowly been mostly forgotten. Then he turned up at a conference I was at. I was so glad to see him well and healthy. We had a nice chat. He seemed happy.
I heard on the rumor mill when he vanished it was a series of personal challenges that being a minor Internet celebrity was making worse. I’m glad he found a new way to be and it is working for him. I miss his presence online but being well-known on the Internet can be too demanding.
Yeah, this is something that resonates hard with me, I’m certainly not _why popular, but definitely globally known for my work in Ruby and Rust. It’s enough that if I go to a conference, I’m not able to talk to everyone that wants to talk to me.
This actually means that you can meet me at e.g. Clojure conferences, just for the fun of going to a conf without… people reaching out to me left and right.
The other thing that touched me more than it should was when during a tournament at my sports club (which has 0 programmers except me), a guest asked a fellow sportsperson “Is that Skade over there?”. That used to be my refuge!
The odd thing is that I certainly don’t dislike being popular and well-regarded. It’s not something to complain about. It’s just… it gets a little bit depressing if you only have 5 minutes for people you could chat weeks with. It’s all so bite-sized.
Hard to believe this was twelve years ago.
The article is 2012. He disappeared in 2009.
Oh for sure. I wasn’t being super clear: I was interviewed for this article. So not just about him leaving, which you’re right that’s even older, but just like, this article specifically.
Oh wow, I read it at the time but didn’t know your name then, lol.
I was already into Ruby and in the process of migrating my company to it when I first heart about _why.
It would be wrong to say that he and his works were what drew me to Ruby. But they were absolutely what drew me back into the wild, chaotic, artistic side of coding. What was beginning to become just a day-job was suddenly full of magic again. It was truly touching to be reminded that one’s creative works – the non-code stuff, even if it’s drawn strangely, or oozes with a personal style that isn’t quite polished or mainstream – can brighten someone’s day and bring meaning back into their work.
So y’know, I don’t know if _why is reading these things anymore. He probably isn’t, probably got a little tired from being constantly held aloft as some kind of superhuman. I would. But I appreciate him, and I hope he’s well.
_why was such a legend. I always wonder what shoes could have become.
It’s tough, because you could ask that about any of his projects, even at the time. He had a brilliant mind and a real knack for generating excitement, but not a lot of follow-through on any one project, no particular desire for community-building, and I would not describe his code as “long term maintenance” oriented. He was proudly showing us the toys he had built himself. And just doing what he did made space for so many other people to treat software as art. In retrospect it’s a wonder that he went so hard for so long without burning out.
But Shoes was cool! Potion was cool! Camping was cool! Bloopsaphone was cool! CLOSURE made people’s hair stand up! Glad he was around when he was around.
I think I understand what you’re saying, but I actually think _why did build community in a very different way and with a different objective. I think he wanted to show us that computing with Ruby would be fun and economical for ourselves. I don’t think he made a distinction between users, developers and maintainers; I think “copy and paste this code and modify it for you” would not have offended him at all, it would have just added to the crazy tumult. I don’t think he wanted to set up a team of developers facing a world of potential users, with mutual responsibilities and a social contract. But I think he absolutely built the Ruby community by attracting a mass of people who were there to play and have fun and were much less serious than other communities. He did more for Ruby by being himself than he could possibly have done by, say, investing all his energy into Shoes or Camping or Hobix (my favorite).
When he was outed and left the community, my interest in Ruby started waning too, because it just killed the magic. I still miss him. Whoever it was that outed him did the world a huge disservice.
You’re absolutely correct; I should have phrased it better. _why never exhibited a desire to grow communities around his own projects, but his support for the Ruby community and programming community in general, inviting people into the fun, was stellar.
I attended a talk that toured the Camping codebase at RubyConf 2024 last week (staff says “about 3-5 weeks before we get all of the videos uploaded to our YouTube”). I was unexpectedly nostalgic for when Ruby style had more perlisms. I don’t want to maintain a codebase in that style, but I hadn’t realized how strongly the community had moved away from it until being reminded.
I honestly believe that a lot of current community practices and preferred styles is off-balance between “code density” and “nice [bureaucratic] structure.” Like a pendulum that went from “we can pack everything in one line” extremity to its opposite of “you can’t even start writing code before nesting it into four modules and splitting into three methods by layers” (I am exaggerating, obviously).
What brought me to Ruby a long time ago I later reflected upon as its “closeness to thought,” i.e. the amount of words and phrases and their structure when thinking about the problem can be mapped very closely into Ruby. Its “linguistic” characteristics, if you will (and that’s the main good Perl legacy, not hard-to-memoize
$,-variables); while the current generation (of community thought) is more inclined towards Java-like “architecture-first” thinking. Not a bad thing per se, just further from what I cherish in Ruby.Mousehole was always my favourite
https://github.com/nogweii/mousehole
something about having a secret world known only to few intrigued me.
Yeah… I have once looked forward to Shoes and HacketyHack development and even participated a bit (mostly in comments/discussions — _why was extremely nice and fun to discuss wild things with).
BTW, there is a recent attempt to revive Shoes, based on WebView, called scarpe. Haven’t looked into it much, but the lead developer behind the project is a cool person, too.
“Shoes”?
It’s a GUI library for Ruby, if I remember right. Combined with Hackety Hack, it was a neat and fun way to make GUI applications with Ruby. It’s one of the things that got me into the field.
Yeah, it was super simple, and incredibly useful for throwing together quick and dirty forms. I loved it so much, but after _why disappeared, it went unmaintained for quite a while, and really lost momentum. It’s still out there, but I don’t think it’s nearly what it could have been.
Aha! Thanks, all 3 of you.
http://shoesrb.com/about/
_why is still alive and anonymous and still doesn’t want to be bothered, despite that little bit of activity several years back.
This was my understanding, yes. I recall a lot of hunting, e.g. on HN, which traced who he really was. The pseudonym was just an assumed persona which he dropped, and then moved on.
Good plan, IMHO.
I ran into another famous vanished Internet personality from this era. He went dark and offline 10+ years ago and has slowly been mostly forgotten. Then he turned up at a conference I was at. I was so glad to see him well and healthy. We had a nice chat. He seemed happy.
I heard on the rumor mill when he vanished it was a series of personal challenges that being a minor Internet celebrity was making worse. I’m glad he found a new way to be and it is working for him. I miss his presence online but being well-known on the Internet can be too demanding.
Yeah, this is something that resonates hard with me, I’m certainly not _why popular, but definitely globally known for my work in Ruby and Rust. It’s enough that if I go to a conference, I’m not able to talk to everyone that wants to talk to me.
This actually means that you can meet me at e.g. Clojure conferences, just for the fun of going to a conf without… people reaching out to me left and right.
The other thing that touched me more than it should was when during a tournament at my sports club (which has 0 programmers except me), a guest asked a fellow sportsperson “Is that Skade over there?”. That used to be my refuge!
The odd thing is that I certainly don’t dislike being popular and well-regarded. It’s not something to complain about. It’s just… it gets a little bit depressing if you only have 5 minutes for people you could chat weeks with. It’s all so bite-sized.
[Comment removed by author]
I was lucky to get introduced to programming with his book and it led me to the journey of Ruby.
Similar “disappearance”, but in 2003: