Why the lucky stiff
Encyclopedia
why the lucky stiff is the persona formerly used by an anonymous and prolific writer, cartoonist, musician, artist, and computer programmer notable for his work with the Ruby programming language
. Along with Yukihiro Matsumoto
and David Heinemeier Hansson
, he was seen as a key figure in the Ruby community.
Why the lucky stiff was the keynote speaker at RailsConf in 2006. He also had a speaking session titled "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever" at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention
held in Portland, Oregon
. It explored how to teach programming and make it more appealing to adolescents
.
On 19 August 2009, his online presence was drastically truncated; his accounts on Twitter and GitHub
were shut down, along with many of his personally maintained sites. His projects have since been collected and centralized on the whymirror GitHub account.
, which "teaches Ruby with stories." Paul Adams of Webmonkey
describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear
". Chapter three was published in The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky.
Try Ruby is an online interactive learning tool that provided a browser-based Ruby shell
and an instructor that guided beginners through their first steps in Ruby. Since Why's disappearance, the project has been continued in spirit at tryruby.org
His most recent project, Hackety Hack
, is a Ruby- and Shoes
- based environment intended to bring the power, freedom, and simplicity of BASIC programming to the current generation, with special intent to be accessible to children.
.
He also dedicates his illustration every year to RubyKaigi
, the biggest Ruby conference in Japan, similar to RubyConf.
In March 2009, he was a speaker at the Art and Code conference at Carnegie Mellon University
.
Ruby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
. Along with Yukihiro Matsumoto
Yukihiro Matsumoto
is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter ....
and David Heinemeier Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki...
, he was seen as a key figure in the Ruby community.
Why the lucky stiff was the keynote speaker at RailsConf in 2006. He also had a speaking session titled "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever" at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is an annual convention for the discussion of free and open source software. It is organized by the publisher O'Reilly Media and is held each summer in the United States.-Notable events:...
held in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. It explored how to teach programming and make it more appealing to adolescents
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
.
On 19 August 2009, his online presence was drastically truncated; his accounts on Twitter and GitHub
Github
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects...
were shut down, along with many of his personally maintained sites. His projects have since been collected and centralized on the whymirror GitHub account.
Tutorials
His best known work is Why's (poignant) Guide to RubyWhy's (poignant) Guide to Ruby
why's Guide to Ruby, sometimes called wGtR or just "the poignant guide", is an introductory book to the Ruby programming language, written by why the lucky stiff...
, which "teaches Ruby with stories." Paul Adams of Webmonkey
Webmonkey
Webmonkey is a popular online tutorial website composed of various articles on building webpages from backend to frontend. The site covers many aspects of developing on the web like programming, database, multimedia, and setting up web storefronts. The content presented is much like Wired magazine...
describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
". Chapter three was published in The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky.
Try Ruby is an online interactive learning tool that provided a browser-based Ruby shell
Shell (computing)
A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web...
and an instructor that guided beginners through their first steps in Ruby. Since Why's disappearance, the project has been continued in spirit at tryruby.org
His most recent project, Hackety Hack
Hackety Hack
Hackety Hack is an open source application that teaches individuals how to create software. It combines an IDE with an extensive Lessons system. The cross-platform desktop application also has integration with the website, where "Hackers" can share what they've learned, ask questions, and submit...
, is a Ruby- and Shoes
Shoes (GUI toolkit)
Shoes is a GUI toolkit based on the Ruby Programming Language. It was originally developed by why the lucky stiff, and others are carrying on with it after his disappearance. Shoes runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux , using the underlying technologies of Cairo and Pango.Shoes' philosophy...
- based environment intended to bring the power, freedom, and simplicity of BASIC programming to the current generation, with special intent to be accessible to children.
Code
_why is the author of several libraries and applications, most of them written in or for Ruby.- CampingCamping (microframework)Camping is a web application framework written in Ruby which consistently stays under 4kb - the complete source code can be viewed on a single page....
, a microframeworkWeb application frameworkA web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, web applications and web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities performed in Web development...
inspired by Ruby on RailsRuby on RailsRuby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...
and based on MarkabyMarkabyMarkaby is a small Ruby library for writing HTML code in pure Ruby. It is an alternative to templating languages such as ERb and HAML which combine Ruby code with some form of markup...
that is less than 4 kilobytes. - Park Place, a "nearly complete clone of the Amazon S3 web service."
- Hobix, a YAML-based weblog application written in Ruby.
- Hpricot, an HTML parser.
- MarkabyMarkabyMarkaby is a small Ruby library for writing HTML code in pure Ruby. It is an alternative to templating languages such as ERb and HAML which combine Ruby code with some form of markup...
, (markup as Ruby), a DSL to generate valid HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
using Ruby blocks and methodsMethod (computer programming)In object-oriented programming, a method is a subroutine associated with a class. Methods define the behavior to be exhibited by instances of the associated class at program run time...
instead of tags. - MouseHole, a personal web proxy that can rewrite the web à la GreasemonkeyGreasemonkeyGreasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to HTML web page content on the DOMContentLoaded event, which happens immediately after it is loaded in the browser .As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web...
. - the RedCloth library, which implements the TextileTextile (markup language)Textile is a lightweight markup language originally developed by Dean Allen and billed as a "humane Web text generator". Textile converts its marked-up text input to valid, well-formed XHTML and also inserts character entity references for apostrophes, opening and closing single and double...
markup language. - the Sandbox, a library for managing several Ruby environments in a single process.
- Syck, a YAMLYAMLYAML is a human-readable data serialization format that takes concepts from programming languages such as C, Perl, and Python, and ideas from XML and the data format of electronic mail . YAML was first proposed by Clark Evans in 2001, who designed it together with Ingy döt Net and Oren Ben-Kiki...
library for CC (programming language)C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, Ruby, and several other languages. Syck has been a part of standard Ruby libraries since Ruby version 1.8.0. - ShoesShoes (GUI toolkit)Shoes is a GUI toolkit based on the Ruby Programming Language. It was originally developed by why the lucky stiff, and others are carrying on with it after his disappearance. Shoes runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux , using the underlying technologies of Cairo and Pango.Shoes' philosophy...
, a UI toolkit "for Making Web-like Desktop Apps" - unHoly A Ruby-bytecode-to-Python-bytecode converter, for running Ruby applications on the Google application engine.
- potion, a tiny, fast programming language with a JIT compiler, closure support and an object model built around mixins.
- bloopsaphone, a crossplatform chiptune-like synth, based on PortAudioPortAudioPortAudio is a computer library for audio playback and recording. Its primary goal is to be a cross-platform, open source library, so that programs that use it can run on many different computer operating systems...
with a Ruby frontend.
Art
He has illustrated The Ruby Programming Language, authored by David Flanagan and Yukihiro MatsumotoYukihiro Matsumoto
is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter ....
.
He also dedicates his illustration every year to RubyKaigi
RubyKaigi
RubyKaigi is a conference for Ruby programmers that occurs every year in Japan. It started in 2006.-Description:During RubyKaigi, there are simultaneous talks and events regarding the Ruby programming language....
, the biggest Ruby conference in Japan, similar to RubyConf.
In March 2009, he was a speaker at the Art and Code conference at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
.
External links
- A video of _why's public lecture at the Art and Code Conference, March 2009
- Episode of the Ruby on Rails Podcast about Camping
- A list of _why's open-source projects (which points to a new location for source code)
- Shoes Roundup: Ruby GUI App Development Goodness, lists a few resources for Ruby/Shoes development
- Soundtrack for the book, Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby
- RedHanded, a defunct blog dedicated to Ruby culture
- RubyKaigi2008 Goodies, _why's illustration used in RubyKaigi2008 (Japanese page)
- RubyKaigi2007 Goodies, _why's illustration(s) used in RubyKaigi2007 (Japanese page)
- _why's estate
- WhyDay 19 August 2010