
Where’s _why? (2012) - Tomte
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
======
tptacek
I get why people are interested in this, but the whole thing seems kind of
gross to me. The guy wrote some good stuff, then decided he was happier being
less Online. That doesn't seem newsworthy (it seems rather healthy, in fact),
especially when the reporting seems so clearly to invade his privacy.

~~~
Dylan16807
Invading privacy is bad, but there's a big difference between "less", and
being done publishing anything, versus deleting everything and completely
disappearing.

~~~
tptacek
Why? Because we say so? It was his content to delete.

~~~
bawolff
This presupposes that content and ideas are "property". I more subscribe to
the idea that once you put content out into the world, it is no longer yours.

(That said, all this chasing and doxing of this poor guy really is disgusting.
If nothing else he absolutely has the right to leave and stop actively hosting
things he doesn't want to host anymore.)

~~~
tptacek
I don't think anyone is complaining about efforts to rescue and resuscitate
the _code_.

------
teddyh
This is just doxing, again, someone who has made enormous effort in avoiding
being doxed and just wants to be left alone.

~~~
bigeasy
Agreed. I always found Lowrey's doxxing to be appalling, especially given that
she is a journalist. Tracking him down to his place of work. Extending his
doxxing using the resources of her publication. As if listing his full name
and place of work was in the public interest.

(Originally posted under wrong thread.)

------
sivers
Why The Lucky Stiff Documentary from 2019:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64anPPVUw5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64anPPVUw5U)

------
shanev
_why’s contributions to the Ruby world always had an art project element to
them. His disappearance is just an extension of his art.

It was amusing to me that his real name wasn’t even exposed on conference
badges.

------
flixic
Quil[1] project clearly references _why and seems like something _why would
create. I’d be curious if he was involved.

[1]: [https://github.com/quil/quil](https://github.com/quil/quil)

~~~
UncleOxidant
Oh, that does indeed look very _Why-ish. Glad to see he's still creating
stuff.

~~~
rurban
Not him. It was whyified by Sam Aaron, the author of Sonic Pi, here:
[https://github.com/quil/quil/commit/32871e15056f684147063309...](https://github.com/quil/quil/commit/32871e15056f6841470633093e6340173d5b20be)
He called it "poetified"

------
e12e
My first thought on reading the headline, was that this was about a
construct/directive/command that should be in interpreters, like irb/ruby,
that often save the last return value as _ (underscore) :

    
    
      > x=3 ; y=2
      => 2
      > x + y
      => 5
      > _
      => 5
      > _why?
      => x + y
      > _why? 
      => x=3 ; y=2
    

Oh well... Then I tmrealized it was probably about what it is about ;)

~~~
icebraining
That seems like a nice feature, yes. Reminds me SHRDLU, where you could ask
the computer "why did you do that?" recursively:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU#Excerpt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU#Excerpt)

------
jacquesm
I've flagged this. Leave the man alone. Stop reposting what amounts to doxxing
of someone who _clearly_ indicated they do not want their internet fame or
connection to real life ID to be made.

------
reagle
I wrote about this and Pilgrim’s exit in _" 410 Gone": Infocide in Open
Content Communities_ [https://reagle.org/joseph/2012/05/draft-
infocide.html](https://reagle.org/joseph/2012/05/draft-infocide.html)

------
pca2
Ethical considerations aside, this article had a huge impact on me and played
a big part in getting me to finally learn to code. _why's style made the idea
of coding very approachable for someone who didn't have a math/science
background

------
bawolff
So after he tried to delete himself from the internet, someone forked his code
and then made it closed source...

I generally believe in the right to leave but not the right to vanish. However
it seems hypocritical to use the right to fork basically to get around
somebody's wishes but then close source the app to not give others the right
to fork.

------
jhoechtl
Did anything ever came out of potion? I thought it was a lookworthty language
but apparently never caught on.

[http://perl11.org/potion/](http://perl11.org/potion/)

~~~
rurban
Still working on it from time to time, but there are several severe
roadblocks. Mostly threads and GC. The re-entrant parser problem ("eval")
should be solvable.

------
weeksie
I always think of _why as a rubyist Rimbaud.

------
droithomme
_why should be left alone. People keep bringing this up and starting the hunts
again to locate and bother him, it's a form of harassment and bullying.

------
sdegutis
I was extremely interested in the _why situation when I first started my
professional career (and started learning Ruby), which was shortly after he
left. Maybe once a year I would search online if there was any news on him,
and when there was that strange thing with his website having a brief printer
feed, I looked into it more deeply than in retrospect seems reasonable.

And I think I finally get why this all was. I think we all liked _why and his
whimsy and his disappearance for the same reason we liked Willie Wonka and
Mary Poppins as children. Because they had an air of mystery about them,
because they were serious yet whimsical, lighthearted yet deeply profound,
creative and imaginative while still being practical.

My interest in his situation, and those movie characters, and similar real
people or fictional characters, went down to zero after I finally learned that
those things were guiding me to Jesus all along. He has all these qualities
and more, and gives meaning to our everyday life. I know that religion is
frowned upon here as being for the delusional and uneducated (ironically), and
that what I'm saying will be taken as the cliche saying of a born-again Bible-
thumper rather than as any kind of profound philosophical statement. But so
many of you have such philosophical minds, and they go to such waste finding
fancier ways to convert bytes into other bytes, because when it comes to daily
lives, you think of yourselves as scientists and not philosophers. I
understand the frustration St. Paul had as he stood on Mars Hill unable to
reach the hearts of the learned and educated elite of his time. I understand
why he went afterwards to Corinth resolving not to use words of eloquence or
plausible earthly wisdom to proclaim what he had personally witnessed, but
rather "to know nothing but Christ and Him Crucified."

~~~
icebraining
> what I'm saying will be taken as the cliche saying (...) rather than as any
> kind of profound philosophical statement

The two are not incompatible; in fact, those that combine both are the
quintessential clichés.

In any case, I can't agree with your characterisation of the general opinion
on religion by HN users. Yes, that contingent is certainly overrepresented
compared to the overall population, but I feel like there's a majority that
has at least respect for the cultural institution, even if we don't wish to
participate. (Curiously, this might actually increase as the population
becomes less religious, since the negative uses of religious teachings will
also decrease proportionally.)

But frankly, what your post seems to indicate is that you lost the ability to
share the joy of the mysteries of _why with the rest of us. I am sorry for
your loss, even if you aren't.

~~~
sdegutis
> but I feel like there's a majority that has at least respect for the
> cultural institution, even if we don't wish to participate.

Most of the anti-religious sentiment is expressed by invisible downvotes and
flags, so people don't generally see how great it is here.

> (Curiously, this might actually increase as the population becomes less
> religious, since the negative uses of religious teachings will also decrease
> proportionally.)

I'm not convinced. People will be even less educated on what our religion
teaches, so there'll just be more general confusion. As Fulton Sheen once put
it, there aren't 100 people in the whole USA who hate the Catholic Church, but
a great many who hate what they believe the Catholic Church to be.
Misconception and misrepresentation will only increase over time.

> But frankly, what your post seems to indicate is that you lost the ability
> to share the joy of the mysteries of _why with the rest of us. I am sorry
> for your loss, even if you aren't.

That's just the thing. The mysteries of _why were not _actual mysteries_ ,
they're illusional, for lack of a better word. Whereas the mysteries of Jesus
are very real and quite satisfying, intellectually and on every other level.

~~~
icebraining
> Most of the anti-religious sentiment is expressed by invisible downvotes and
> flags, so people don't generally see how great it is here.

Downvotes and flags aren't invisible, they're shown by comments becoming grey
and [dead], respectively (the latter can only be seen by people who have that
option enabled, which I do). The points also influence the ordering in a
thread, and I often see posts respectful of religion at the top.

What I also see are people seeing their own posts downvoted and deciding it
must be due to a particular reason, which I often disagree with.

> I'm not convinced. People will be even less educated on what our religion
> teaches, so there'll just be more general confusion. As Fulton Sheen once
> put it, there aren't 100 people in the whole USA who hate the Catholic
> Church, but a great many who hate what they believe the Catholic Church to
> be. Misconception and misrepresentation will only increase over time.

People don't hate what they don't know; how many people today hate the
Manicheans? People hate what they feel as threatening. The Catholic Church
increasingly doesn't, in my opinion.

> The mysteries of _why were not actual mysteries, they're illusional, for
> lack of a better word.

Not everyone shares the fetish of the authentic. Of course they're an
illusion.

~~~
sdegutis
I'm surprised you would call a genuine pursuit of authentic truth a fetish,
and admit to enjoying an illusion. But I guess I shouldn't be. That's why
people pass on the Santa Claus tradition, and those who enjoyed it when they
were kids now enjoy MCU and Star Wars movies in their place, even reading and
writing fan fiction about it. Every shred of evidence throughout my life has
convinced me that anybody who loves truth will eventually hear it in Jesus's
voice, and those who don't will scoff at the idea exactly as Pontius Pilate
did.

~~~
icebraining
> I'm surprised you would call a genuine pursuit of authentic truth a fetish

That's an overreaching interpretation of what I wrote. One can pursue the
truth without declaring everything else as worthless. Plus, I dispute the idea
that "non-authentic" mysteries can't convey truth.

> now enjoy MCU and Star Wars movies in their place, even reading and writing
> fan fiction about it.

Well, I don't. I do enjoy, for example, _The Man Who Was Thursday_ by GK
Chesterton. Is the mystery of Sunday illusory? I care not one whit.

~~~
sdegutis
> That's an overreaching interpretation of what I wrote.

That's a fair point. I'm extrapolating a bit from many other people I know,
including nominal Christians and Catholics and my past self.

> One can pursue the truth without declaring everything else as worthless.
> Plus, I dispute the idea that "non-authentic" mysteries can't convey truth.

I agree, which is why I said that the allure of the character of _why (and
Mary Poppins and Willie Wonka) is actually a shadow of Jesus, pointing to Him.
But trivial pursuits for their own sake are too common, leading people to stop
halfway through the journey to Truth because they're satisfied with an
illusion. This is the tragedy I lament on HN in general and this thread in
particular.

> GK Chesterton

If you enjoyed him, you'll enjoy Fulton Sheen too I suspect. The most thought
provoking philosopher of the 20th century. Also, I have a friend who was
convinced of becoming Christian by CK Chesterton but stopped short of
Catholicism. Reminds me of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

