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Comment by SkyMarshal | Hacker News Reader

Why The Lucky Stiff is a mercurial enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery. He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby, among other things, put it all out on the Internet, then when it got popular he tried to retract and delete it all and disappear. He only succeeded at the latter though, his books live on. But people still wonder where he went, and hope that one day he'll resurface. This post title implied he has, but alas, it's misleading.

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That's not entirely true. why was happy to remain in the public eye long after he and his book gained notoriety. What you don't mention is his prolific open source work, including the html/xml parser hpricot. why's disappearance seemed to happen just as nokogiri, a technically superior parser, became prominent, though why's motives will never be known for sure. why's last tweets include:

"caller asks, “should i use hpricot or nokogiri?” if you’re NOT me: use nokogiri. and if you’re me: well cut it out, stop being me."

"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive."

I don't know much about _why but as I read all the stories about his disappearing I can't help but think he had serious problems in his life. To take it personally and go away only because your code is getting old and slow while other learned from it and wrote something better is IMO wrong! You should also learn from libraries and go on write something new and challenge yourself again. Giving up because of a loses match is just not ok.

I also find it pretty odd that no-one seems to know what he is doing now. What about all of his friends? Do they also don't where he is? But I think if someone puts so much energy in hidden himself he shouldn't be found anyway.

He was "unmasked" at one point. Last I heard - shortly after his disappearance - he was alive and employed. My take on his disappearance is that he just wanted to bow out of the limelight. Fair enough, IMO.

People started digging too deep, trying to unmask him, so he pulled the plug. I admire the people who do know his identity but kept it under wraps: kind of like a geek code of omerta.

Bingo, this is, as an acquaintance of _why, the main reason. Though I think it is more complicated than just one thing. Before when he got outed he was able to talk to the person and get them to respect his anonymity, but this time around the person wouldn't budge. He wanted his artwork to stand on its own, and has his reasons and I respected them so that's as far as it went.

Thanks for this. I can understand that people want to get out of the light because not everybody can take that.

Some people have jobs where it's discouraged to stand-out or draw attention outside of work. Doing so is looked-down upon and may lead to reprimand or termination. I have no idea if this was the case for _why, I just want to point that out.

Yeah can imagine there are jobs where it is required to stay "hidden". I think it is very interesting cause most times you can make a name in communities when good and at the same time popular people from the community are working for your company.

On the other side there are plenty of people who did or still do a lot to be popular in the community.

Last but not least I think the guy has earned some rest.

I think _why left because he didn't want to do it anymore, it's that simple. Being _why must have taken up a load of time and one day he just wanted to spend it some other way - I'd suggest that it shows he was far more balanced than the average "rockstar" programmer, he may really just have left to spend more time with his family.

He gave a lot to the community, far more in the short time he was around than most people produce in their lifetime, and we should be/are thankful for it.

"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive."

... or any sufficiently large and financially important enterprise code, really. :-(

This is like saying zombies are alive...

No. Enterprise (and enterprisey) code is born dead. With huge amount of effort, it may be coerced into walking. It also eats brains.

Enterprise (and enterprisey) code is born dead

This strikes me as all of:

1. wrong

2. unsupported

3. inflammatory

4. of no value to the conversation.

Would you care to support / substantiate that claim somehow?

> He wrote these crazy awesome ebooks on Ruby

And interesting libraries and tools (Camping, Hpricot, Redcloth, Syck, Shoes, unHoly — a Ruby to Python compiler, TryRuby and Hackety Hack).

He also looks like the old Jack Black (with hair and beard, Tenacious-D Era)

As well as the books, he also wrote a few fairly-widely-used Ruby libraries, often with quirks. (eg. Camping, the web framework whose goal is to always have its codebase stay under 4kB)

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