A latent gift from _why | Hacker News Reader

A latent gift from _why

blog.hackety-hack.com

165 pointsjordanmessina35 comments

I know this is a bit of a tired phrase, especially from me, but more than anyone else in software, _why reminds me:

"Do not follow in the footsteps of _why, seek what he sought."

I feel like _why is out there watching us, to see how well we learned all the stuff he tried to teach us. Like Jesus.

He metaphorically died for our apathy towards creativity. :o

This has been part of the challenge, for sure. I've written about it here before, [1] but it's difficult. One of the reasons I'm seeking what he sought is that I think what he was doing was valuable. So it's hard not to follow in his footsteps a little, while also trying to make it my own.

Shoes is actually going through these kinds of growing pains at the moment. Shoes 4 is going to be some pretty big changes, and possibly a totally-near re-write. It's hard to do, but sometimes, a break with the past is good for you...

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1617918

Thanks, Basho.

This also shows us the importance of documentation.

Still, I miss _why. There are a few hackers that have equally inspiring projects, and even some that come close to _why's love for teaching or _why's creative ability, but none of them are the _why. I hope he's still somewhere out there, doing something great.

This also shows us the importance of documentation. I don't mean to be contrary, but I had the opposite takeaway. There's something almost wrong about having a manual for everything. Put another way, there's something really beautiful about discovery.. and democratizing it to everyone who comes across something instead of just the first guy who got saddled with writing the documentation. I think it's well within the spirit of what _why was up to.

Well, you're probably right, given that this was a tool for teaching.

I just wish _why would come back, regardless of the reasons he left (wanting to be anonymous). Those of us who like him do so regardless of whether we can find out his 'real' name. The character of _why is larger than that.

While I think _why added something great to the world, and sad to seem him go. I like to think he left behind his imagine on top, and not a fat elvis. Same reason I miss The Show, but recognize that someone who is dedicated to creativity is always seeking a new way forward and a new path. _why as a character seemed to no longer provide that vessel.

I like to believe he's out there, using some new pseudonym (or many) and still contributing in different areas.

Even if he's not, there's a lot of good people who still are.

When I first started hacking away at the Hackety source, I was referring to it as "software archeology." _why's personal coding style, his distaste for comments, and his advanced Ruby knowledge made fixing bugs a real treat. (I say this non-sarcastically: I love puzzles.)

I don't have a citation, but I remember seeing something where he said he never learned as much about Ruby internals as he did when creating Shoes. I feel the same way... doing more than just building Rails apps has made me learn more about Ruby than I would have otherwise, and I'm becoming increasingly appreciative of it.

Here's another screenshot of drawing stuff with the editor, and a color picker: http://imgur.com/2jEEm.png I'm adding it to the article, but just in case you've already checked it out.

Devil's advocate here: isn't a quirky, idiosyncratic coding style with no documentation generally considered a liability just about anywhere else?

Absolutely. Generally, we're talking about building robust, reliable systems, though. _why specifically thought this hampered creativity. I can't find a citation for you right now, though.

Part of making his projects my own? Adding this stuff. I can see _why's point, but I don't think it's right for Shoes/Hackety themselves.

You might be thinking about this quote from camping-list?

    No, let's not have rules.  I don't feel comfortable with having
    coding standards or any protocol on Camping.  The point of Camping
    is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that
    people make for "beautiful" code these days.  To show that ugly code
    can do beautiful things, maybe.

    I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the
    ideas that make Camping different.  Camping's personality is 80x50.
    It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together
    into a tight little mind-bending machine.  The challenge of Camping
    isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation.  The challenge is
    to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make
    everyone look twice.  Not all code needs to be a factory, some of
    it can just be origami.

Not the exact one, but gets the point across nicely. :)

Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it? I respect _why's abilities and contributions - he's done a hell of a lot more for the Ruby community than I have - but I don't take much truck with the "coding as art" mindset. It's a field of engineering with creative overtones. It should be treated as such.

Of course, I'm a nobody, so no one cares much what I think :)

> Then "creativity" kind of misses the point of software engineering, doesn't it?

This could also be equally phrased as "Then software engineering kind of misses the point of creativity, doesn't it?"

> It should be treated as such.

You are certainly entitled to your opinions. I personally fall on the 'craft' side of things: woodworkers can make sculptures or doors. Both are valid applications of their craft. Some people specialize in sculpture, some in doors, and nobody is right or wrong.

Certainly, it can be viewed as a craft - but isn't 90% of craft learning to do things the 'right way?'

Right, but our craft is so new, everyone disagrees about what the 'right way' is, and how to get there.

Just in case it isn't clear, the color picker is a standard OSX dialog box.

Totally. Shoes uses native widgets on every platform.

Not for the buttons in the bottom-right, though?

Those are specially styled. A regular 'button' call would give you a native one.

https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/blob/master/app/u...

"... and his advanced Ruby knowledge made fixing bugs a real treat."

Well, features of a language should be used to made the code easier to read, not the other way around.

I don't think I agree with a blanket statement like this. Features of a language can be used to make the code easier to read, if that's your goal (eg, to have other people read it and understand it -- including your future self). Sometimes, though, your goal is just experimentation and exploration. Why do you think obfuscated code contests exist?

I love these evidences of _why's embrace of humanity. He truly understood that software is about humans.

You mentioned Sound Foley and art, but you left something out, so maybe people aren't aware of this one:

Try this, type dingbat into the editor and hit tab.

Hey Tim, long time no talk! Have you been getting notifications when I close tickets? Ha...

Yeah, dingbat didn't fit into my story. But it is pretty cool, though I still have some issues to work out on OSX...

Yes I have! You're on fire! I haven't been on Hackety a ton lately, but I'll be back.

No worries. You know that door is always open.

From the available choices of sounds to generate, I'm guessing he included a port of sfxr: http://code.google.com/p/sfxr/

Nope, it's his own library, Bloopsaphone: https://github.com/mental/bloopsaphone (though there maybe some sfxr -> bloops connection I'm not aware of)

There is actually; Bloopsaphone is based on sxfr, at least if the COPYING file is to be believed.

Yet more source code I haven't read! Good to know.

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