| Unknown (alias why the lucky stiff) |
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|---|---|
_why at RailsConf Europe |
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| Other names | why, _why |
| Occupation | Ruby programmer, author |
| Known for | Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby, Camping |
why the lucky stiff (often known simply as Why or _why) 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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] His projects have since been collected and centralized on the whymirror GitHub account.[4]
Contents |
His best known work is Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby,[5] which "teaches Ruby with stories."[6] Paul Adams of Webmonkey describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear".[7] Chapter three was published in The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky.[8]
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.
_why is the author of several libraries and applications, most of them written in or for Ruby.
He has illustrated The Ruby Programming Language, authored by David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto.[14] 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. [15]