I've always felt this was a singular achievement, one which perfectly captured the spirit of its author, the community he inhabited, and a particular zeitgeist in programming and on the internet. The need for various other authors to attempt to replicate it for other languages by creating rambling, twee books with wacky titles and comic characters of their own, I've frankly found a bit sad and underwhelming. It's a bit like Boaty McBoatface. It was funny because it broke all the traditional austere rules for naming things, not because Nouny McNounface is somehow innately funny. And yet the joke is replicated endlessly as if each time it's possible for it to be new.
_why was at the FOSCON at FreeGeek 10+ years ago. I walked up to him, and he looked at me and said "You look familiar."<p>Looking back, I'm sure we had never met. I just think he probably did that to build connection with anyone he met, and I loved that moment with him. There was amazing intimacy that he created everywhere.
When I found this as a ~15 year old I had farmer parents who were pushing me away from computer based careers because they didn’t want me to “waste my life in front of a box”. I had done some C++ coding small adventure games but programming then still felt really cold and academic.<p>When I found Why’s book, I loved it. I thought it was funny, dark and moving. It wasn’t about programming, Ruby was a sidecar to this person expressing themself in an incredibly vibrant way. I felt like: wow, there are people like me in programming, too!<p>Now I run a 30 person product shop in NYC. I may have never learnt to code if not for Why.
Aside from the book, this brings back all those fuzzy feelings of learning ruby. Boolean functions end in ?, in-place transformations end in !<p>each, unless. It's just such a beautiful language.
Does anyone know if this site was recently put together or if it's been around all along? WHOIS says the domain was registered back in '14. I love _why's writings and largely credit him with getting me excited about using Ruby back when I was in college. Really nice to be reminded of his work.
Although I am fascinated by _why's personality and his art, I think this book is partly to blame that Ruby is not as popular as it could (and should) have been. It somehow embodies that proto-hipster vibe the Ruby community used to have at the beginning, which alienated a lot of potential users. Luckily I managed to overcome that initial hurdle (the Pickaxe book helped a lot), but a lot of (good) developers I know haven't, and lots of them stayed with ASP (and its later offspring) and PHP.
Every time this book is mentioned, I feel like a moron.<p>I learnt ruby reading books, going through the koans, the rails turorial from M. Hartl... But I could never ever understand the poignant guide to ruby. I mean, I got paid to write ruby for several years so I obviously learnt the language, but I never understood what Why’s book was about or how it could teach me ruby. Just completely went « whoosh! » over my head at the time. And it still does.
Ruby is an appealing language for sure , but is it worth learning it in 2020, with the intention of getting paid for one’s work? It is an honest question and in no way am i trashing the language. Just curious what others have to say about it
I learned basically nothing from this book. Maybe if I were a new programmer it would have helped but as an experienced programmer I found its pedagogy too distracting to learn anything. But Ruby is easy to learn and fun to use. The headline about it is that code can be executed in a class definition. If that's not broadcast right at the beginning, it'll take a long time to learn what's going on in Rails.
I'm pretty sure it was _why who set up the first darknet I was ever on. You had to set up your /etc/hosts and do some other tricks, to browse to hidden pages. Unless I'm confusing with another similar thing around the same time, there was some JS involved and you could find hidden features layered on regular websites.
I love the physical copy of this that I got with my ticket to Brighton Ruby this year: <a href="https://www.consonance.app/blog/brighton-ruby-2020/" rel="nofollow">https://www.consonance.app/blog/brighton-ruby-2020/</a>
The "magic" of Ruby is the reason I begin with, and it's also the reason i stop using Ruby.<p>Enough magic is fine, productive, but too much magic (Imagine making your own magic with Ruby) will make you hurt.
Here's an article about the mythos of Why for those who don't know: <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/ruby_ruby_on_rails_and__why_the_disappearance_of_one_of_the_world_s_most_beloved_computer_programmers_.single.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/...</a>
This book always brings back good memories for me.<p>If you are interested in diving deeper into _why's work you can find a comprehensive catalogue of his public works here <a href="https://viewsourcecode.org/why/" rel="nofollow">https://viewsourcecode.org/why/</a>.
I learn't my first Ruby with Why's guide and will always be grateful.<p>For me the most important point is the simplest: that learning things should be fun. We're too serious about lots of things, making it fun not only makes the process more enjoyable - it's more effective too.
For me, this is one of those quintessential software books. Reading it takes me back to 2005, when I was in college — not studying CS but still building for the web as I have been since I was 13 — and feeling so <i>seen</i> to see a book/collection of essays/language introduction written in an original and irreverent style much more akin to Dave Eggers than anything else of the genre.<p>I never really embraced Ruby — though I always admired it and adopted TextMate like all the other cool kids — but this and _why’s other work stuck with me as sticks with me now.
I miss why. He was great to work with. His mind worked in differently than anyone I've worked with. He was still so nice, humble and a good teacher. Famous for Ruby, he could twist any language to solve a problem - or twist it just for the fun of it.
The writing style always reminded me of my favorite teachers as a child.<p>I always suspected that ROR's popular with young programmers in the 2000's had more to do with Why's writing style than specific merits of ROR.
I miss _why being out there, producing content. He reminded me of the Beagle Bros books for the Apple II, which were my first introduction to programming in 1990 or so.
I still share this every time someone is new to Ruby. He's a really good story teller which is all the more impressive given that code is involved...
this is legitimately the worst programming book i've ever read. i wanted to get started with ruby back in 2009, and everyone was praising this book. i got it, read the first few chapters, and got bored out of my mind. it meanders and takes forever to get to the point. in the end, i never really learned ruby, and the main cause was this book.