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Would anyone be willing to explain this? Who is "us", what is a PCL, what is a spool, what are these random words? Is this supposed to be a puzzle?

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A few weeks/months before _why published this book, this page appeared on his "public print queue" on his site, hinting that the print queue would become active on April 18: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/blob/master/PDF/DESO...

A day or two before April 18, this page appeared containing a hand-written OCaml script you could use to hook up your own printer to _why's public print queue: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/blob/master/PDF/HOME...

On April 18, a bunch of us gathered in an IRC chat room (https://viewsourcecode.org/why/CLOSURE/ircLog.html). A few of us got the script working on our machines, and so every 10-15 minutes our printers would suddenly start up and print the next page as _why slowly published them one at a time throughout the day. Steve Klabnik gathered all the pages into one PDF and gave it the name "CLOSURE".

This article does a good job of giving more context around the book itself (as well as a partial summary): https://kev.town/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-stiff-quit...

I am still kinda sad that the only place I kept the video of my printer printing out pages was Vine. Oh well.

EDIT: I am now realizing that, ironically, maybe that is appropriate...

As far as I can tell, many (all?) Vine videos are still available if you have the link

Oh wow! Okay hmmm, thank you, I will see what I can do...

From: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE/issues/3

vi commented on Sep 30, 2015

What is CLOSURE.PDF? Readme is not helpful. I don't even understand is it a scientific paper, a book, a program or a game. My first thought was "Fed up! I'm closing! Here is my closure manifesto."

Along with Thanks, _why. there should be answer to What is CLOSURE? question in repository description.

mikehenrty commented on Aug 13, 2016

I think the problem is that nobody except for _why and perhaps a few people close to him know the context of this material. It just showed up on his blog one day after years of online radio silence. These hacker news posts show some of the confusion and excitement from that time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5015087

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571387

Note that the link from Hacker News, _why's original blog, is now operated by some Australian guy with no apparent relation to _why.

I believe the conceit here is that _why is communicating to us through a printer queue or "spool". PCL files are a form of printer data file.

1. "Us" is the Ruby community (and arguably programming at large)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_Command_Language

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooling#Print_spooling

4. They are individual titles of each page

5. yes, this was a puzzle of sorts, though the answers were kind of given to us beforehand, so you can argue that it wasn't a difficult puzzle. The PDF is the "answer" to the puzzle, if you will.

Others already explained this, I just wanted to add that you make me feel old...

I'm 48. I don't think age has anything to do with knowing the context behind this. From the other explanations, you apparently had to follow a very specific subculture dedicated to a specific individual. I did not, rather the opposite. I tried to read his Ruby book when it came out and I simply couldn't. No offense to the vast army of folks who enjoyed it -- I think we're all allowed to like what we like.

There's something wrong with the way my brain is wired. I am by accounts an intelligent, capable, successful person, but I am completely unable to "read" comic books. I might as well be staring at a foreign language. When I'm trying to learn a technical topic, I thrive on dry reference material. Put a cartoon in and it's like running into a brick wall.

I don't know where I was going there except I feel like any time this comes up, I have to over-explain myself for not liking that book, because everybody loves that book and I will be burned at the stake for not regarding it as the greatest programming book ever written. It's just my personal experience, and I accept that I'm totally wrong about it, ok? Anyway, shorter version is that I had such a visceral reaction, any time I see "why_" mentioned, my reading comprehension reverts to that of a toddler.

If that's all irrelevant and the point you were making was more like "kids today don't know what PCL is", I am very familiar with PCL and print spoolers, but detached from any context that would suggest printers, they failed to take on any semantic value.

You can be perfectly capable of reading a comic book and not really care to try to learn technical information by way of a comic book.

I'd much rather learn from concise code examples, with short explanations for new concepts. It's a lot more efficient than wading through all the irrelevant prose and illustration.

Idem. I remember not being able to get past the first page of the guide way back in the day, and indeed cannot today either. The signal to noise ratio is just abysmal.

I also cannot read comic books and, with perhaps the exception of the systemd man pages, likewise thrive on reference material.

Somewhat relatedly, I can't really do podcasts or audiobooks, either, unless they're in a foreign language, and then the challenge of comprehension provides something for my brain to latch onto.

Dude, it’s ok.

I loved the work _why did back at the time, in general. Doesn’t mean I loved every single thing.

In particular, I never bothered to finish the poignant guide. It didn’t speak to me. But I loved the fact that it enthused other people.

There never was a need for worship as far as _why was concerned.

PCL is postscript common language or something like that, basically an alternative to PDF as far as I know.

Printer Common Language. More an alternative to PostScript than to PDF, in that it's a language that a lot of printers understand (as the name suggests).

No, it's HP Printer Command Language[1]; it's the 'native tongue' of things like HP LaserJets. It predates and is different from PS and PDF[2] and isn't an alternative for PDF in that you don't store documents 'in PCL'.

[1] https://developers.hp.com/hp-printer-command-languages-pcl [2] https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06242096

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