Heartwarming... One of the first programs I ever wrote, on a PET-2001, was a crude running elephant. Later I made it controllable with the arrow keys.
Why did this enigmatic guy disappear from the nets?
Why did this enigmatic guy disappear from the nets?
Although, if he now distrusts the Ruby community too badly, he might be waiting for a new language espousing "programmer enjoyment" to sprout up...
I think the only lesson he's trying to teach us is to take things less seriously, to accept transience and impermanence, to realise that nearly all of us are just making pictures in the sand. Almost everything we do will one day disappear without trace. We might as well get used to the idea.
Chunky bacon.
Humans understand new things by comparison to what they already know, so fresh souls are often misunderstood and misclassified.
I'll add to that though. often, when people die (and _why did in a sense die), people view everything they did through rose colored lenses. I'm with the majority in HNers in this thread so far, still in awe of _why, however, let's not forget the tough lessons his disappearance taught us.
While I greatly appreciated everything _why did for the community and think he truly was an amazing person, it's clear in my mind that the way he left the community, without notice that he would take down his sites and code, was irresponsible. He had the right to do what he did, but that doesn't make it ok.
I'm not angry at _why, more sad. I assume, given his eccentricities, that there was no malicious intent behind it, which is why I find it merely tragic. However, his leaving was a powerful reminder of the responsibilities open source software authors have. If you make code free, you should make sure it stays available within reason, and if you use free software, you should take _why's disappearance as an object lesson.
...but that was exactly what he was from the beginning; I don't believe he ever considered himself to be an "open source software author." He said himself (in the article, even) that he was only ever messing around—it was our fault for depending so heavily on what he intended to be either "art" or "toys", but never "work."
His ethic (really an aesthetic, as he was an aesthete) worked well for those who were with him from the start, but it was entirely incompatible with the premise of "software engineering." The only people sore from his loss were those on the outside looking in.