[HN Gopher] _why's Estate
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_why's Estate
Author : nonbirithm
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-11-07 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (viewsourcecode.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (viewsourcecode.org)
| lilyball wrote:
| I absolutely loved _why's work. It was hugely influential and
| wonderful.
|
| Having said that, when they committed identity suicide they
| deleted everything they could. Preserving their work for archival
| purposes seems valuable, but I feel weird about operating a
| "museum" or "estate" dedicated to showing people where to read
| the stuff that _why tried to delete.
| [deleted]
| dmerrick wrote:
| Few developers in my career have stuck with me the way _why did.
| I hope he is doing well, wherever he is.
| dang wrote:
| One past thread and a bit:
|
| __why 's Estate_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1004592
| - Dec 2009 (58 comments)
|
| __why 's Estate_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16849754
| - April 2018 (1 comment)
| waynecochran wrote:
| A lot 404's in there...
| bruce343434 wrote:
| The very top link, "bloopsaphone", results in a 404.
| [deleted]
| lekevicius wrote:
| Quil[0] repo has either a homage to _why, or _why has contributed
| the intro.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/quil/quil
| EsotericAlgo wrote:
| As a a weasel word, I hear it mentioned whenever why's writing
| comes up the absolute sea-change it caused in the types of
| writing that followed it. I know it absolutely changed the
| content that was coming out even if it was just part of the
| zeitgeist. Are there any other canonical example of the why
| style? A few that come to mind:
|
| * Learn You A Haskell for Great Good
|
| * Land o Lisp
|
| * Clojure Brave and True
|
| I don't find myself with the time to luxuriate in this type of
| writing much any more and typically gravitate towards more terse
| material. However, I credit this style towards developing an
| ineffable sort intuition and making autodidact approaches a bit
| easier (at least for myself).
| bradrn wrote:
| Oh, so _that_ 's where _LYAH_ came from! I read it when I was
| first learning Haskell, and I recall being somewhat puzzled by
| the style. More recently, I know someone who stopped reading it
| in large part because of the style -- it seems to have gone out
| of vogue now.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| You could add at least _Learn You Some Erlang for great good_
| and _Realm of Racket_ to your list.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| From Python land, Mark Pilgrim had a similar hiatus from the
| internet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim
| spicybright wrote:
| FYI the following links 404:
|
| bloopsaphone
|
| hacketyhack
|
| markaby
|
| metaid
|
| chirrup
|
| skistrap
|
| fakeplus
|
| processor
|
| rb_parse_args
|
| The last two seem to not load at all, but it might be a problem
| with their sites:
|
| rubyforge.org/projects/dns-zone
|
| dotfiles.org/~_why
| Nekorosu wrote:
| Finally, an act of homage for that wonderful mind.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Half of the links are dead? Including the 'whymirror'.
| riffic wrote:
| didn't they get doxxed at some point? I don't think they're
| actually dead. this is kind of crossing a line (i'm not an expert
| so I can't say exactly what line is being crossed, but I don't
| think it's fair to the person who originally created this work).
|
| edit: yep, wikipedia lists his name. I think "he just wants to be
| left alone" is a fair statement to make.
| lilyball wrote:
| They committed identity suicide. For all intents and purposes
| _why is dead, regardless of the state of the human who used to
| operate that identity.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm uncomfortable with this sort of confounding a character
| with the person behind it. If an author says they're not
| writing any more books about X, that doesn't mean that
| suicide (or murder) has taken place. It just means we won't
| see anything more from that author using that character
| unless they change their mind.
|
| My concern is for the person behind it. I hope they're well
| and are doing something they find more satisfying and less
| stressful!
| thom wrote:
| On the one hand, I think almost everything _why touched was
| beautifully crafted. On the other hand, I am tired of twee
| programming language tutorials about woodland animals written by
| people with far less talent. I guess I am getting old.
| handrous wrote:
| _why's style is like Wes Anderson: great, but divisive; and
| intolerably awful when anyone with less than excellent taste &
| skill tries to imitate it.
| 1_player wrote:
| The tragedy of learning a new programming language as an
| experienced software engineer is having to start from complete
| basics tutorials about counting apples in a basket and
| metaphors to teach what a variable is.
|
| One day I'll finally learn Ruby, once I manage to find a
| learning resource which isn't aimed at complete newbies and
| goes in depth into the metaprogramming and intricacies of the
| language.
| Bayart wrote:
| I like to start with live coding exercises, think Exercism[0]
| or Codewars[1], to get a good sense of the syntax and
| utilities and then do an actual project with real
| documentation on the side.
|
| Tutorials just don't cut it for me, they never have. It's
| just a grueling format and it does nothing but put me off the
| tech I'm looking at.
|
| [0]: https://exercism.org
|
| [1]: https://www.codewars.com
| weaksauce wrote:
| Other than that metaprogramming ruby book liked in another
| comment... reading "eloquent ruby" was an absolute treat.
| it's teaching you all the idiomatic stuff from ruby and not a
| bunch of filler. easily one of the best ruby books ever
| written... hell maybe even one of the best programming books.
| It also dips into metaprogramming and all the other stuff
| ruby is known for.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| you could probably pick it up pretty easily just through
| rubykoans.
|
| http://www.rubykoans.com/
| hello_newman wrote:
| this is a really great book on metaprogramming in Ruby
|
| https://github.com/dazhizhang/ruby-
| rails/blob/master/Metapro...
| HahaReally wrote:
| Everyone likes a true original and dislikes the imitations.
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