Eulogy to _why
ejohn.org
ejohn.org
This post and zed shaw's tweets on the same subject are so stark in contrast.I think I finally understand why zed shaw is so unloved by many. It is because of lack of respect for someone else's choices.
Edit: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412128128
_why preached "peace & love" and "ruby's nice" and then the second he's outed he rips down gear people depend on. He's a dick.
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html
"I believe that whatever the author wants to do with his or her works is their right. They wrote it, despite everyone telling them it wouldn’t work. They slaved over it rather than going out with friends. They debugged it, and wrote documentation for it so everyone else could use it. They may have even spent a part of their time promoting it and helping people with it. All for free, and for whatever reason they choose."
Zed's very no-nonsense. He's spent a lot of time manufacturing an image of himself. He lets himself get carried away and angry and he's been searching for a community he likes, butting heads all the way.
_why, on the other hand, was truly bizarre. I never got into his blog, for instance, because it seemed frequently nonsensical and more than a little rambling. Despite that (or, more likely, because of it), he seemed almost always happy with whatever it was he did. I only ever really got into TryRuby and his Poignant Guide, but they were the only two guides to programming I've played with. There was a giddiness in his work that I haven't found in other coding. It's comparable to the moods of artists in other fields.
Zed's argument against _why is that what he did was impractical and unproductive. That's what made _why as a persona, though: Zed is a hacker, _why was more of an artist, pretenses and unreliability and all. It's left-brained versus right-brained; it's also why there's a definite rift between the people who like _why and the people who think the guy was raving mad and immature.
^ Yes, I know the KKK are not technically Nazis.
Leaving personalities out of it, there is a big qualitative difference between ceasing to share something (in the worst case, undirected passive-aggressive behavior) and actively attacking other people (in the worst case, highly directed active-aggressive behavior).
In any case, with or without the statement involving the KKK, I believe that my final statement in that post stands.
It's like if I was mad for some reason (eg my zero karma above) and responded by flaming you vs. simply not answering.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to abuse and offend.
I'll leave you with this little nugget though. Freedom of speech isn't really true freedom of speech if what you really mean is 'freedom to say only the things that I want to hear.'
I'm all for documenting and educating, not for outlawing stupidity, no matter how long your toes.
I think I'd rather have USA style free speech laws than the make-believe ones that we have here. You can keep the guns though.
?? living in the UK I have yet ot be lynched for calling the royal family pompous.. well.. ;)
Also I think there is some confusion here on the difference between the statments:
"It is my belief that...." and "It is a fact that...."
One is covered in free speech, one is (rightly) restricted by all sorts of law (for example defamation when applicable to statements about people). Think about it - if we had the inherent right to tell people our ideas were fact when this is not established
Your free to think what you want, and tell people that's what you think. But presenting beliefs as fact is a big no no. Right? :)
(holocaust denial being illegal is, I agree, somewhat of an extreme case and I dont agree with it so much)
http://www.trouw.nl/krantenarchief/2007/07/31/2306950/Boete_...
international situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9
In the UK such laws are also still in the books.
Anyway comparing _why's actions to hate speech is just ridiculous.
I find this view of yours very offensive. Shut up.
haha. which one are you talking about?
Namaste
I love how _why considered code art. I loved it when he wrote out his code by hand and animated the background of the text. It made the code seem magical, which it sometimes is.
Which is what Zed is referring to when he says "the second he's outed."
Curiously, an old Wikipedia edit identifies the same place of employment, three years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_the_lucky_stif...
http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414550229
"Actually, I didn't see a lot of sympathy from _why when I was going through similar tough times. In fact, the inverse."
And: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414567310
"Totally jealous, I wish I could leave the ghetto as completely. :-)"
What comes off as gruffness, I think, overlies a complex substratum of hurt and ambivalence.
Doesn't change the fact that Zed's cursing out _why and acting like a jerk. He's not just being a jerk, but he is being a jerk.
Why are we programmers, as a group, so negative? When Ernest Lawrence was going on-and-on about the Cyclotron, other physicists got tired of him, but they told him to get off his ass and build it, not that he was an ignorant git and it wouldn't work. Why is it that every interesting idea in programming is met by someone saying it wouldn't work with the supporting logic inversely proportional to the nastiness of the tone?
Therefore, to some programmers, if someone else is likely to do something more brilliant than you, it's motivating to stop them. Especially so, since if you are successful in stopping them, your own perceived merit goes up as the smarter dog in the room.
This game is reinforced by the game of karma on many programmer discussion sites. I have to admit, I succomb, as I want my karma to cross 200 so I can downvote. It's a stupid goal, but my ego is prone to it.
P.S. Please note that science is also prone to this behaviour, and programming and science have the same solution to the problem: actually building a verifiable { experiment / correct theorem / more efficient algorithm }.
cf. Science in Action by Bruno Latour (1987), which I tried to summarize on http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SocialConstructionOfScie...
But then, why are the objections so often brain-dead!?
I'm planning to make a modern version of Logo (yeah, with the turtle) using Shoes.
OTOH, _why is one real person who has interacted in real life as '_why'. He could be dead, and that would be more sad than a mere retraction of published material.
Has there been anything other than speculation as to the real reason for the takedowns? If so, I haven't seen it; Resig's 'eulogy' has only "I personally believe [more speculation]."
What if _why is physically or mentally sick? What if he's in a self-destructive mood?
I'm not saying Resig did anything wrong with his chosen conceit -- it's a reasonable turn of phrase -- but I also completely respect and understand the g-g-grandparent poster's declaration of discomfort.
For me, the _why persona was a little beacon that radiated the message: "you can make cool stuff and have fun regardless of your circumstances". That's a nice contrast to the dreariness of so much of the IT world on the one hand and the (often justified, but still depressing) rants about the evils of the IT world on the other hand.
I'm reading this as a complete outsider, and trying to find the source of this level of adulation is difficult at best. I assume it's a community-centric thing, where someone outside of the community wouldn't "get it". It all just seems so bizarrely self-congratulatory.
And what do you mean "regardless of your circumstances"? What do we know about his circumstances that would convey that message?
I feel very inspired by the works of Salman Rushdie. He hasn't published anything for a few days - should we eulogize him on HN too?
I'm not over simplifying the man or his life - I'm suggesting that this is absurd way to react!
1) Generally being "done" with that particular identity or community, and having lost interest to the point where the effort required to maintain it was disproportionate with the enjoyment or self-aggrandisement derived from it. If this is the case, then eulogising and lamenting and celebrating is misplaced: Perhaps introspection would be a better reaction - asking, "what is wrong with the community such that a high-profile member no longer wants to be a part of it?"; or
2) Some kind of personal or mental problems that have precipitated this, in which case, the value of maintaining an online profile is probably just less than the perceived value from removing all traces of an online presence.
Or alternatively, any number of explanations to do with hackers or vandalism could be in play too.
I just think the response has been totally disproportional to the event, at least until more information is available.
This communities in this case would be the entire online and open source communities.
Darn. What a shame. Guess I'm not gonna learn Ruby now.
On a lighter side, for some reason Ruby reminds me of "The Mighty Boosh" .. its supposed to be great, amazing, and all the younger kids are into it, but when I actually sit down and try to comprehend "why?" (no pun intended), its just a big fat meh.
No, people are saying that a remarkably unique artist/hacker is a creative visionary, which he is.
"I'm reading this as a complete outsider"
Outsider to what? Creative work?
That's very subjective.
And I was claiming to be an outsider to the Ruby community, which this entire thread appears to be centred around.
No, taste is subjective. That _why is unique, a hacker, an artist and creative is not.
"And I was claiming to be an outsider to the Ruby community"
Yeah, hence why I'm highlighting the inanity of your insistence on viewing his work through the prism of "Ruby" rather than for what it is: creative code in multiple languages including one he invented, artwork, music, books and commentary on making programming more accessible and fun.
He wrote a graphical toolkit, a sound synthesiser, an HTML parser, html template language, a language (grammar, parser, vm and jit, gc, ...), and many other software projects on his own.
All of these are a joy to use. They are not only well though out technically (and it's an euphemisim), their APIs are excellent and often fun to use, and they are wonderfully documented.
Do you know of many people who are proficient in so many domains?
He also has a very personal graphic and literary style. What makes him unique is that he treated coding as an artistic medium too, and that he was able to mix his various skills to create integrated works.
Can you name somebody else that would qualify for these traits?
If not he's indeed a remarkably unique artist/hacker, and a creative visionary since no one had done that before.
OK, I could be overstating it a little, but I reckon there are people in the Ruby community who could tell me what DHH had for breakfast.
Perl seems to focus its love and attention on Larry Wall himself, for the most part.
He's unpolished, but his songs are whimsical and his instrumentation is ridiculous. I didn't know he had an album. I really want it.
Although, hackers are associated with more utilitarianism and art isn't always functional. Sometimes hacking is for the sake of hacking though, just like art.
Not because he killed all his sites and code but because that's possibly the last we will ever hear! Too often do high profile programmers have a "hissy", delete stuff and then a few hours later make loud proclamations about why they left and who was being a dick for XYZ reasons (and how it is their fault)
Kudos for having the balls to just switch off I suppose.
(on the subject of it being a "dickish" move; it's not one I agree with or one I would take BUT I suppose it's possible he reasoned that copies of his code are around and anything seriously useful would be recoverable. The damage isn't too great. But the statement of removing it all is huge. That's it - no more contact ever).
With nothing to maintain or a way to be contacted he can just get away from everything that was bothering him (and it is clear stuff was bothering him). Assuming his actions are not more drastic (I cant believe NO ONE knows enough about him to contact him in some way) than this then perhaps in 6 months, a year he might return and carry on :)
To paraphrase a great film - lets at least end it with hope;
Hope guides me, that is what gets me through the day and the night. The hope that after you're gone from my sight, it will not be the last time that I look upon you.
Hopefully he'll be back.
I must admit that he wasn't on my radar until now, though I read his guide to Ruby, but now I love him.