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A latent gift from _why
- die_sekte 16y agoThis 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.
- sabat 16y agoI 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.
- thorax 16y agoI 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.
- mey 16y agoWhile 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.
- famousactress 16y agoThis 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.
- die_sekte 16y agoWell, you're probably right, given that this was a tool for teaching.
- steveklabnik 16y agoWhen 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 http://imgur.com/2jEEm.png I'm adding it to the article, but just in case you've already checked it out.
- RodgerTheGreat 16y agoJust in case it isn't clear, the color picker is a standard OSX dialog box.
- steveklabnik 16y agoTotally. Shoes uses native widgets on every platform.
- Xuzz 16y agoNot for the buttons in the bottom-right, though?
- steveklabnik 16y agoThose are specially styled. A regular 'button' call would give you a native one. https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/blob/master/app/ui/widgets.rb#L10 https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/blob/master/app/u...
- dan00 16y ago"... 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.
- raganwald 16y agoI 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."
- steveklabnik 16y agoThis 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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1617918
- barrybe 16y agoI feel like _why is out there watching us, to see how well we learned all the stuff he tried to teach us. Like Jesus.
- mcantelon 16y agoHe metaphorically died for our apathy towards creativity. :o
- ahoyhere 16y agoThanks, Basho.
- JoelMcCracken 16y agoI love these evidences of _why's embrace of humanity. He truly understood that software is about humans.
- mambodog 16y agoFrom the available choices of sounds to generate, I'm guessing he included a port of sfxr: http://code.google.com/p/sfxr/ http://code.google.com/p/sfxr/
- steveklabnik 16y agoNope, it's his own library, Bloopsaphone: https://github.com/mental/bloopsaphone https://github.com/mental/bloopsaphone (though there maybe some sfxr -> bloops connection I'm not aware of)
- pauldino 16y agoThere is actually; Bloopsaphone is based on sxfr, at least if the COPYING file is to be believed.
- steveklabnik 16y agoYet more source code I haven't read! Good to know.
- timinman 16y agoYou 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.
- steveklabnik 16y agoHey 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...
- timinman 16y agoYes I have! You're on fire! I haven't been on Hackety a ton lately, but I'll be back.
- steveklabnik 16y agoNo worries. You know that door is always open.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]