A letter from _why

<i>Please</i> add [2005] to the title. You had my hopes up there for a moment.

&#62; I admire programmers who take risks. They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or "crappy" code.<p>I can still remember the advice a guy at least 10 times smarter than me gave me at the start of my programming career: "One of the most important things for a programmer to have is courage". At that time I couldn't fully understand what he really meant, I was thinking that REST vs. SOAP or PHP vs. Java or OO vs. Functional Programming were way more important for a programmer to get right compared to just having "courage". But as I grow older I realize how wrong was I.

My favorite _why-ism was how he would hand write and scan code snippets for his blog (often without any explanation of what it did). Then, when lazy people started OCR-ing the images, he would post code as animated GIFs.<p>It was not only fun to look at, you actually had to type out the code yourself to find out what it did.

As a beginner at programming, I find _Why to be a breath of fresh air. I realize that experienced coders may berate him for advocating writing sloppy code, but for someone (like me) who is just getting into this deep rabbit hole, I find his thoughts to be encouraging. I fully agree with some of the comments here that mention writing bad code is the only path to writing clean and safe code. I wish more experienced hackers could recall a day that, they too, wrote bad code. As a beginner, I'm positive that much of my code would make people here cringe, but hey, at least I'm learning! Ultimately, I think that was Why's point. Kids and beginners shouldn't worry if their code is "correct", they should just write code and keep learning. I think that's a noble endeavor and a great legacy.

Those who think somehow _why is advocating writing bad code aren't paying attention:<p>&#62;Twenty lines here and there and soon people will be beating you up and you’ll be scrambling to build on to those scripts and figure our your style and newer innovations and so on.<p>The point I think is, write (possibly bad) code and evolve. Break stuff, innovate and evolve.

Can someone write an explanation for <i>why</i> this is important? Who is this person?

"Until an asteroid,"<p>By far the best byline I have ever read.

'Until an asteroid' is probably one of the best sign-off ever. It's true that we really don't know what's coming down the pipe for us, so code and be happy, or whatever you do, but be excited and motivated about it.

From yosfek's site: Risk aversion is innovation aversion...

Just remember that there are many ways to become successful. However without even trying, there is no way to learn anything.

First, you have to learn the rules. Then you have to master the rules. You have to really know what they're for, how they make things better. Then, finally, you can start breaking the rules.

&#62; They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or “crappy” code. If you worry too much about being clean and tidy, you can’t push the boundaries.<p>Yes, of course. You push the boundaries, move on, and at the end of the day, we have to maintain the stinking pile of "experiments" you left us with. Ugh.

Ahh I thought this was a letter from 'beyong the grave' rather than a historical one. Oh well. Imagine he's out there doing something clever somewhere.

"I do not write tests for my code. I do not write very many comments. "<p>and then:<p>"I admire programmer who take risks"<p>Denial much?<p>By the way: this was written in 2005.

newfound respect. thanks very much for posting this.

_why is not an average programmer. His advise is good for masters of programming. He is also a super nice guy and sounds like he thinks anyone could become a super programmer.<p>I don't think so. And I fear his advice will be taken most to hart by below average programmers.