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by vario 949 days ago
his 'artsyness' was the main reason I avoided learning Ruby for years-- wrongly thinking people who code in Ruby speak like him.

I know this is a possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think one should glorify a sophomoric book as a key Ruby book-- there are others that deserve that title, PickAxe is close, but I'd have liked a book like Whittaker's "C#, Player Guide" for Ruby.
2 comments
sleight42 949 days ago
Perhaps Ruby isn't for you then?

Matz's intent was and has been to bring joy and delight to developers, with the odd combination of PERL, LISP, and Smalltalk as his inspirations. Joy and delight don't necessarily equate with "most practical". But joy and delight are wonderful and healthful qualities to cultivate for a good life!

_why embodied much of the spirit of the (at least earlier) Ruby community. We were software developer immigrants, many coming from prescriptive verbose technologies (I'm looking at you, Java!). We were eager for novel ways of expressing our ideas. Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities are, as far as I know, still all but unmatched beyond perhaps Smalltalk itself (and IO, which AFAIK no one uses seriously). _why's playfulness captured all of this in elegant and sometimes bizarre but often artistic expressions in his projects and code.

I will never regret or apologize for the Ruby community's appreciation for the Poignant Guide.

And, _why, wherever you are and whoever you are, thanks.

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dividedbyzero 949 days ago
I absolutely loved _why's guide, not the least because it made certain very serious, over the top professional people very uncomfortable. Bullshit in the guise of Very Serious Business Software Engineering is still bullshit, but if you present something like it's a big joke to you, and it still shines, there probably is something to it. I feel a lot of present-day IT wouldn't pass that test.
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vario 949 days ago
Well, my opinion is, he took something elegant and sublime and dressed it up in bullshit; there's nothing wrong with being playful and fun--as I mentioned earlier, Whittaker's "C#, Player's Guide" is the ONLY programming book that presented serious stuff in a fun way without clowning.
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