[HN Gopher] _why's Estate ___________________________________________________________________ _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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-07 23:00 UTC)