[steveklabnik]

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.

[jacquesm]

I really fail to see the connection between any of that and what starkfist wrote.

[steveklabnik]

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.

[jacquesm]

> Sorry for taking a bit to get back to you, I'm traveling, and my Nexus One sort of sucks for long comments.

np, no hurry :)

> Anyway, first, to re-iterate: nobody really knows shoes, err, why _why disappeared. This is just conjecture.

Ok. I figured as much, which is one of the reasons I asked. I thought that someone might be able to finally provide some hard info on this, but it seems not.

> 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?

Because they can. That's the downside of giving stuff out, you lose control. If you want control then you can go corporate, but as soon as you release stuff in to the wild, if it is at a level where plenty of others could 'fork' it they probably will (or they'll start some me-too project).

This is one of the bigger downsides of open-source, there is a lot of fragmentation and not all of it is good.

> 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.

Yes, I noticed that. But then again, _why is definitely not unique in that. In the Ruby scene he is, but outside of it there have been over the years more people in that vein. I've known one personally here in NL but it was before the 'dawn of the web', so none (or at least, almost none) of it is documented.

Burnout is typically a symptom of taking on more than you can deliver and then to keep on throwing more of yourself on it until there is nothing left to give. I've had it and it took me years to recover. Not quite 'didn't touch a keyboard' but very close.

> And, since _why was an artist, he put a chunk of himself in every project he did.

Everybody does that. Really, people put a piece of themselves in to their work all the time. Any creative profession has this, whether it is a designer, a programmer or a person that restores old vehicles. Work created becomes like a child.

> And when you put yourself out there like that, and people reject it, it's hard.

That's the downside of putting your work out like that.

What bothers me a bit about the _why saga is that the ending of it left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, it's fine if you no longer want to play, but active destruction of what you've created points to mental problems a little deeper than just a burn-out.

> 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.

Happens to all of us. I have my share of those and I'm a public 'nobody'.

> Just look at this thread, and the people that want to remove all artistry and craftsmanship from programming.

Not all. I'll be writing a long piece about that any day now, and in part it was prompted by this thread. But there is a lot more to it than 'all code is art' or 'no code is art'.

> The naysayers won. _why got burned out. He decided his sun had set, so he burned his guitar.

Any fool can destroy, but the naysayers did not burn out _why, he did that for the most part to himself. By taking on more than he could sustain-ably deliver he set himself up for a fall, and by not keeping enough distance from the trolls he allowed them to get under his skin. If you are in the public eye by accident that's one thing, but if you choose to be in the public eye by your own choice you really have to have a thick skin.

Look at all the flak that Linus, RMS and Guido van Rossum get, none of it is deserved and they just keep on giving.

One of my first exposures to contributing open source was an extremely negative one (I wrote a clone of zmodem and got crucified publicly by none other than the great Paul Vixie himself for 'copyright violation' when in fact all that happened was that a few lines of an old include file made it in to the spec for the new code, and so eventually in to the distribution. He neglected to mention that this was perfectly ok in a non-spec'd protocol and that Chuck Forsberg, the original author of zmodem was his buddy).

After that I vowed to never release code again.

I can't imagine what would have happened if I had gone through with my idea of an open source micro kernel based operating system released to the public. Probably I would have burned out a lot worse than I did on the webcam project.

Naysayers are like trolls. Ignore them, don't feed them.

As an educator (and that's how I primarily see _why) he had an exemplary role, and I think he failed in showing the people he was teaching how a mature person bows out when they realize it is no longer worth it.

[steveklabnik]

We're really in agreement. I actually wrote about this before, back when that Kanye thing hit HN: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/why-bother-creating

It's rough being out there, but you're absolutely right. You have to grow a thick skin. But that doesn't mean that everyone is able to do so.

Oh, and you were going to write a µkernel? That's awesome, I help out two of my friends with an exokernel. It's been two years of hard work, and like you conjectured, we've had a lot of naysayers. But it's coming along really nicely, I'd say...

[jacquesm]

I actually built it, but I never released it.

It's lots of work getting something like that built and built properly. I can vividly recall the day when it first booted and then a few months later when it became self hosted was really amazing.

I've dumped some source for you here: http://ww.com/task.cc http://ww.com/task.h , it's the kernel itself and the main header file for the process structure. It's 'hard real time', something I wished linux would get on to in the standard releases, and switched on by default.

Maybe there are some ideas in there that are useful to your friends. If you guys get something working let me know please, I'm always interested in stuff like that.

It's funny when I look through that old code, how simple it all looks, blood sweat and tears to get it right though. That was definitely pre-burn-out code :) Since then I've done only much simpler stuff, with the occasional venture in to something a bit more ambitious.

greetings & thanks for the exchange btw.