To give you an example of why starkfist would say something like this, you only need to look at @_why's last few tweets:
"programming is rather thankless. you see your works become replaced by superior works in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."
"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive."
"an ascending homage to fish bones. culminating in a delicate canopy of mouse furs."
... Okay, maybe not that last one. Anyway. He was obviously contemplating all of the stuff we've created around software, and was pretty bummed out by it.
Not that anyone will know _exactly_ why he disappeared, but still.
Sorry for taking a bit to get back to you, I'm traveling, and my Nexus One sort of sucks for long comments.
Anyway, first, to re-iterate: nobody really knows shoes, err, why _why disappeared. This is just conjecture.
Basically, those tweets are all talking about the social constructs we've put up around programming. There are large fads, things come and go, old projects are abandoned, new projects and forks of old ones spring up. The quote about games seems to be really about hpricot; from some reports, _why was kind of upset about Nokogiri, and everyone's shift to it. If people didn't like hpricot, why not contribute, rather than make the same project over again?
The first one is something I'd also expect to hear out of someone who's getting burned out. _why did a _lot_ of things. And, since _why was an artist, he put a chunk of himself in every project he did. It's unmistakeable, all of his endeavors undoubtably have his signature attached to them. And when you put yourself out there like that, and people reject it, it's hard. It's easy to get frustrated when you invest yourself in something, and other people simply reject it out of hand. There's a dead comment at the bottom of this thread that talks about people 'giving him shit' on the shoes mailing list, which I wasn't subscribed to at the time, but with anyone as prolific as _why, I can't imagine there wasn't a fair body of naysayers. Just look at this thread, and the people that want to remove all artistry and craftsmanship from programming. Hence what starkfirst was talking about.
The naysayers won. _why got burned out. He decided his sun had set, so he burned his guitar.