4 ms·

This is a 2009 post referencing a 2005 letter. Got my hopes up that _why was back! For those unaware, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff https:/

by btown 4y ago

This is a 2009 post referencing a 2005 letter. Got my hopes up that _why was back! For those unaware, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff _why’s legacy from things like https://poignant.guide/ https://poignant.guide/ was a radical shift in how web programming could be taught, and how fun and approachable (for folks of all backgrounds, academic and otherwise) it could be to learn. IMO we owe a tremendous amount of the modern startup landscape to him.

xrd 4y ago
_why is not the Messiah. He's actually still in Seattle, last I heard. He's more of an idea and an ideal anyway. It's better this way, better that he never "returns." Who wants to see Instagram posts of _why talking about the shitty hamburger he ate? He's always going to be a mystery to me and that's so much better than anything else could ever be. And the reason he is legendary only increases because of that. Thanks so much for that, _why, whenever you are.
- msla 4y ago
  _why will never return even if the person comes back into the limelight because _why was a character played by a specific person at a specific point in time. David Bowie did that a few times, some (The Thin White Duke) being more regrettable than others (Ziggy Stardust) but none of them being truly him, or really meant to last.
- codezero 4y ago
  what is a messiah really?
  - hnuser123456 4y ago
    a messenger of great knowledge/savior, this this case a reference to jesus as used by GP
    - codezero 4y ago
      kind of what i was going for - _why was a great source of knowledge.
  - kragen 4y ago
    a guy with oil on him
    - xrd 4y ago
      When you put it that way, _why definitely would have had oil on him since this was written. HE IS THE MESSIAH! (referring to Monty Python skit)
- MollyRealized 4y ago
  This is not a correction to/opinion about anything you said, but I happen to have this note handy on my desktop because I was caught trying to find different words for the same concept you were speaking of above with the word "ideal". Found these words: archetype, prototype, ideal, ur-form, primordial (mathematics), formal cause, exemplar, Platonic form, essences, archetypal, original pattern, fundamental pattern, first principle, protype, paradigm, archetypical Just mentioning it as an aside in case anyone's ever similarly trying to find the right word in the future.
andrei_says_ 4y ago
I tried to read the poignant guide three times and hated it and stopped every time. Didn’t care about the cuteness, at all, and was super confused. Just my experience.
- riffraff 4y ago
  I loved _why and most of the stuff he did (redhanded, hoodwinkd, camping, shoes, etc) but I never liked the poignant guide either. Still, it was pretty influential and original.
- wertw 4y ago
  Same here, I never understood what all the fuss was about. It was irritatingly twee, and absolute dogshit to actually learn from.
  - fargle 4y ago
    same here. different people like different things, but it was the opposite of what i'd like to see more of. fun yes, eclectic yes. silly? superficial? trite? not so much. i appreciate the sentiment of _why, but quality, depth, rigor, and tenacity are also important. _why is no Richard Stevens. if you fold up and throw a tantrum the minute that your 5 seconds of fame is over and you get to experience some real criticism and apathy and all sorts of other unpleasant things that successful people have to handle, it sort of underscores the immaturity of it all. matz is still around, isn't he? hell, so is even larry wall.
    - derefr 4y ago
      The thing is, _why never wanted to be successful — specifically in the sense of having any of his prose work depended upon by others as pieces of education; nor any of his programs depended upon as pieces of engineering. Rather, _why was pretty clearly an artist, and was trying — in both his prose and his programming — to make what one might call “experimental didactic art”: works that explore how to teach and how to learn (mostly, about programming), rather than works that use concrete teaching methods to teach particular concepts. The Poignant Guide, Shoes.rb, any of the libraries he spun off — they were all this. You weren’t supposed to use them; you were supposed to look at them, analyze them like a painting, think about the “brush strokes” involved in their construction, and from that, grow your perspective on education itself, and programming education in particular. But people weren’t doing this. People were treating his “software artwork” like he had intended it all as FOSS projects — things to be contributed to and to polish and to grow, even at the expense of the original goal of representing an exploration of a particular idea, to be absorbed and stolen from. And people were treating him as if he was a core contributor to said not-projects, someone to submit bugs and complaints to, rather than someone who made their own finished thing as a statement and only wanted to discuss its meaning, not keep working on it forever. matz and Wall are bad comparisons. A better comparison would be to someone famous for being a member of a particular band, who is now no longer in that band, but instead in a different band, making a different genre of music. Are they happy that people still appreciate their old work? Sure. Do they wish people would stop asking them about it? Also yes. Do they want to know that they played a wrong note on a song they recorded twenty years ago? No; what good would that do them now? Do they want you to fix that song of theirs for them, 20 years after release, because hey I’m a sound engineer and — no. Stop. It’s fine. It still works as art with the wrong note; and even if it didn’t, it’s long past its relevance; the people the art was aimed at, the people it was supposed to affect, already either got it or didn’t. If an engineer takes all their software down, you might call that “throwing a tantrum in response to criticism.” But if an artist takes all their art from one “period” of their works down, they’re just doing something artists do every day: ending a gallery exhibition, either because the message it communicated either succeeded in becoming culturally embedded, or failed to resonate. For an artist, the value of their art is in the communication of thought it enacts, not in the art itself; a piece of art doesn’t have to stick around forever, it just has to be seen by the right people at the right time to nudge the world in the way the artist desired. (In extremis, this is why so many artists are perfectly happy making performance art, where each unique showing is done once, only for those there at the time, to never be experienced again once it’s over. The art was never the point; the communication was!)

by btown 4y ago

xrd 4y ago

_why is not the Messiah. He's actually still in Seattle, last I heard. He's more of an idea and an ideal anyway. It's better this way, better that he never "returns." Who wants to see Instagram posts of _why talking about the shitty hamburger he ate? He's always going to be a mystery to me and that's so much better than anything else could ever be. And the reason he is legendary only increases because of that. Thanks so much for that, _why, whenever you are.

msla 4y ago
_why will never return even if the person comes back into the limelight because _why was a character played by a specific person at a specific point in time. David Bowie did that a few times, some (The Thin White Duke) being more regrettable than others (Ziggy Stardust) but none of them being truly him, or really meant to last.
codezero 4y ago
what is a messiah really?
- hnuser123456 4y ago
  a messenger of great knowledge/savior, this this case a reference to jesus as used by GP
  - codezero 4y ago
    kind of what i was going for - _why was a great source of knowledge.
- kragen 4y ago
  a guy with oil on him
  - xrd 4y ago
    When you put it that way, _why definitely would have had oil on him since this was written. HE IS THE MESSIAH! (referring to Monty Python skit)
MollyRealized 4y ago
This is not a correction to/opinion about anything you said, but I happen to have this note handy on my desktop because I was caught trying to find different words for the same concept you were speaking of above with the word "ideal". Found these words: archetype, prototype, ideal, ur-form, primordial (mathematics), formal cause, exemplar, Platonic form, essences, archetypal, original pattern, fundamental pattern, first principle, protype, paradigm, archetypical Just mentioning it as an aside in case anyone's ever similarly trying to find the right word in the future.

andrei_says_ 4y ago

I tried to read the poignant guide three times and hated it and stopped every time. Didn’t care about the cuteness, at all, and was super confused. Just my experience.

riffraff 4y ago
I loved _why and most of the stuff he did (redhanded, hoodwinkd, camping, shoes, etc) but I never liked the poignant guide either. Still, it was pretty influential and original.
wertw 4y ago
Same here, I never understood what all the fuss was about. It was irritatingly twee, and absolute dogshit to actually learn from.
- fargle 4y ago
  same here. different people like different things, but it was the opposite of what i'd like to see more of. fun yes, eclectic yes. silly? superficial? trite? not so much. i appreciate the sentiment of _why, but quality, depth, rigor, and tenacity are also important. _why is no Richard Stevens. if you fold up and throw a tantrum the minute that your 5 seconds of fame is over and you get to experience some real criticism and apathy and all sorts of other unpleasant things that successful people have to handle, it sort of underscores the immaturity of it all. matz is still around, isn't he? hell, so is even larry wall.
  - derefr 4y ago
    The thing is, _why never wanted to be successful — specifically in the sense of having any of his prose work depended upon by others as pieces of education; nor any of his programs depended upon as pieces of engineering. Rather, _why was pretty clearly an artist, and was trying — in both his prose and his programming — to make what one might call “experimental didactic art”: works that explore how to teach and how to learn (mostly, about programming), rather than works that use concrete teaching methods to teach particular concepts. The Poignant Guide, Shoes.rb, any of the libraries he spun off — they were all this. You weren’t supposed to use them; you were supposed to look at them, analyze them like a painting, think about the “brush strokes” involved in their construction, and from that, grow your perspective on education itself, and programming education in particular. But people weren’t doing this. People were treating his “software artwork” like he had intended it all as FOSS projects — things to be contributed to and to polish and to grow, even at the expense of the original goal of representing an exploration of a particular idea, to be absorbed and stolen from. And people were treating him as if he was a core contributor to said not-projects, someone to submit bugs and complaints to, rather than someone who made their own finished thing as a statement and only wanted to discuss its meaning, not keep working on it forever. matz and Wall are bad comparisons. A better comparison would be to someone famous for being a member of a particular band, who is now no longer in that band, but instead in a different band, making a different genre of music. Are they happy that people still appreciate their old work? Sure. Do they wish people would stop asking them about it? Also yes. Do they want to know that they played a wrong note on a song they recorded twenty years ago? No; what good would that do them now? Do they want you to fix that song of theirs for them, 20 years after release, because hey I’m a sound engineer and — no. Stop. It’s fine. It still works as art with the wrong note; and even if it didn’t, it’s long past its relevance; the people the art was aimed at, the people it was supposed to affect, already either got it or didn’t. If an engineer takes all their software down, you might call that “throwing a tantrum in response to criticism.” But if an artist takes all their art from one “period” of their works down, they’re just doing something artists do every day: ending a gallery exhibition, either because the message it communicated either succeeded in becoming culturally embedded, or failed to resonate. For an artist, the value of their art is in the communication of thought it enacts, not in the art itself; a piece of art doesn’t have to stick around forever, it just has to be seen by the right people at the right time to nudge the world in the way the artist desired. (In extremis, this is why so many artists are perfectly happy making performance art, where each unique showing is done once, only for those there at the time, to never be experienced again once it’s over. The art was never the point; the communication was!)