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Comment by EsotericAlgo | Hacker News Reader

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).

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> 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.

Same.

Unpopular opinion, but I really can't stand _why and his imitators' style.

I would have started using ruby a bit earlier were it not for the cute "zine" style that was so popular with that community in the mid aughts.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's not hating on something to prefer a different style. I can see the appeal, for example, to kids or bohemian artists.

Computer science and engineering doesn't have to be dull. But it can be fun and engaging without being trite and forced. I think XKCD has a better vibe.

It's not hating on something to prefer a different style, sure. It _might_ be hating on something, though, to choose the words "trite" and "forced" to describe it, howsoever you feel justified in using then.

Agreed. Both “trite” and “forced” imply an unjustified distrust of the author’s motives.

Land of Lisp has cartoons and some whimsy, but I don't think of it as especially why-pilled, personally. (Haven't read the other two.) I mean, Starting FORTH had cartoons and whimsy too in the 1980s.

Don't forget Beagle Bros for the Apple ][ era.

I never had an Apple of my own, alas. The TI-99/4a had less personality.

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.

I’m fairly sure LYAH came from the Borat movie and not from why.

The title, perhaps. The illustrated guide format is more _why's bag, right?

(Though the texts are so different in tone and style I always thought the comparison was a bit shallow.)

You could add at least Learn You Some Erlang for great good and Realm of Racket to your list.

From Python land, Mark Pilgrim had a similar hiatus from the internet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim

The main difference, though, is that Pilgrim wasn't an assumed identity. I think in his case, he just got tired of being a spokesman for Python and wanted to get his privacy back.

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