[unalone]

Let me modify the OP's comment, Jacques: _why was one of the first people to create art around and about our modern software community.

There are a variety of cultures surrounding coding which, while somewhat diverse, still feel like somewhat of an echo chamber. You have the coding-for-startups culture, for one, and then you have people who are very invested in coding efficiency for the sake of coding efficiency. Both of these are healthy things to have exist, but they lead to a few very specific personality types dominating the landscape, and the result is that programming can seem very forbidding to people who don't match those sorts of identity. Heck, it can be forbidding to people who do match them. And you have little clusters of hobbyists here and there, but those clusters are easily overlooked by people who aren't searching for them.

The message I felt _why delivered with his work more than anything was that programming is fundamentally about more than code, or even about building. He tried to capture the emotions behind programming, the joy of learning to speak logic-driven languages, the humanity behind the hobby. And that humanity wasn't just bubbling whimsy and childlike wonder, though certainly _why dabbled in his fair share of that. There was a whole lot of insecurity, fear, worry that he might be throwing his life away on something impermanent and... not frivolous, because frivolity suggests a joy... neurotic, perhaps. Something that ultimately was consuming his time for no good purpose other than that he was locked into a pattern and couldn't see beyond it.

As somebody who's not a programmer, not even really a designer, that message struck me hard and deep, and _why sure seemed like the only person getting it out there in any big way – at least sometimes. In every other creative community I'm tangentially a part of, that dark pit of uncertainty tends to play a big role, not only in shaping the culture, but in shaping the creative direction of the medium. Musicians ask themselves whether the music they're playing is pointless, or whether the way they're making music is somehow harmful or runs contrary to the feelings they're trying to evoke. The result is that music changes. Directors ask all sorts of questions about how film should be made, how much a shot should be composed or "designed". Actors have a bevy of debates about artifice or insincerity in their roles. And writers... well, writers are about as fucked-up a category of people as they come, to the extent that the nicest and friendliest writers will cheerfully talk about how their entire life's work is probably futile and pointless.

_why wasn't a very good programmer, from what I hear, but his messiness was anathema to the kinds of cultures I usually associate with programming. He played games, and worried out loud, and made it seem like the secret to everything he did was that combination of caring/not caring that he was constantly oscillating between. The first thing that struck me about this print spool was how much it felt like a maturation of his message: not quite as whimsical, but silly in more nuanced ways, and more on-target serious about things he felt bothered by without feeling as impulsive as some of the things he wrote earlier. I love his Guide to Ruby, but there's certainly a bit of a mood-swinginess to it that this lacks.

First artist to work with software, or to comment on software? Hell no. But he felt, at times, like he was the only artist within this makeshift community that was really talking about how it felt, how it worked, what was so frustrating or nerve-wracking about it. That's why, I think, so many people treat _why like he was something special. It's probably also why so many other people don't get his appeal at all: for them, the culture that exists is exactly the one they want, and they find it irritating (if nothing else) that this "jester" was prancing about talking about non-relevant things.

[KirinDave]

> Let me modify the OP's comment, Jacques: _why was one of the first people to create art around and about our modern software community.

Let me modify jacquesm's comment so we can put a halt on this.

Fuck you for discarding the creative work of literally a whole generation of people in the software community before _why entered the scene.

I cannot use any term less hostile. It's that repugnant to me. It's such a toxic, repugnant, self-centered post you and the previous commenter have made that I was literally dragged back to HN after months of hiatus just to vent my anger.

You are wrong. You are imply everyone who came before was a mindless, emotionless robot. Art and programming have been intertwined since before programming was a real thing humans could do. See Lovelace's letters on her take on the subject if you want to talk about it. So there is that.

So to all you people who want to act like somehow you've discovered the secret of emotions and programming? You're telling all those who came before you to go fuck themselves. You have told them that your ignorance invalidates their work, then proceeded to wax philosophical on the tiny sliver of the body of work you are aware of like it's an entire universe.

It wouldn't be okay in any other medium, in any other artform, or in any other discipline. Period. And it's not okay here.

There. My jimmies have rustled free.

[skoodge]

Wow, I really did not expect such a reaction.

Where exactly do you see me (OP) or the parent discard the creative work of a whole generation of people? In fact, in my top post I talked about a very particular combination of different things that make _why unique. I still stand by the hypothesis that _why was (at least one of) the first artist(s) to show such a combination in his artwork.

Of course there were lots of people before _why thinking about and expressing the relationship between art and programming. There were also lots of people thinking about teaching children just for recreative purposes (Alan Kay comes to mind as the most prominent example). There were lots of people fusing emotions with programming, in fact every act of coding is very emotional. I never said anything to the contrary and so I cannot see how you arrive at phrases like "mindless, emotionless robot".

Individual contributions such as the poignant guide, Shoes and even TryRuby are not really that important in my opinion, neither are they unique to _why. As I said, it's not _whys code that matters (to me). But rather _why's whole collection of "stuff" is so much more than a bunch of random things, it is a very coherent (funny to say that in the context of _why...) artistic opus with a clear signature and an artist's style. And I am not talking about code style here, I am talking about a clearly identifiable artistic message.

[testing12341234]

Where exactly do you see me (OP) or the parent discard the creative work of a whole generation of people?

Right about here:

_why was the first person to actually create art "around" and "about" software.

That statement is discarding the creative work of (at least) a whole generation of people. Certainly you claw a bit back by stating "but to my knowledge". However, the rest of your statement throws away that concession.

[unalone]

Let me add to my other comment: I apologize if what I said came out dismissive of the many, many great programmers that do good work and help form the community. I was trying to provide context for why _why strikes such a chord within some people, rather than argue that everybody should feel about _why the same way that his biggest fans do.

It was genuinely not my intention to rustle any jimmies, and I am sorry that my comment provoked you so.

[adrianoconnor]

Hat tip for use of the words 'Jimmies' and 'Rustled'

And boy, you sure did rustle them :-)

[unalone]

Got that out of your system, buddy?

"Our modern software community", referring to the current generation of the software community, obviously doesn't refer to the whole generation of people who existed and did good work before _why entered the scene. Clearly Ada Lovelace and _why were far from contemporaries.

You are reading something into what I wrote that isn't actually there. It's nice that you're as passionate about this as you are, and it's a good thing to be passionate about, but I do think you're misreading what I wrote, and getting terribly upset about it in the process.

[KirinDave]

> Got that out of your system, buddy?

No.

>"Our modern software community", referring to the current generation of the software community, obviously doesn't refer to the whole generation of people who existed and did good work before _why entered the scene.

In our generation you can find tons of people doing performance art with code and custom hardware. The music scene is positively bursting at the seams, as is the gaming community.

> Clearly Ada Lovelace and _why were far from contemporaries.

A useless attempt at a conversational dodge. Good luck.

> You are reading something into what I wrote that isn't actually there.

You literally can not know what you do not know. For example, I've attended a talk on continuations by Jim Wierich before _why was more than an occasional poster on the ruby list (and well before his book was done). It included a poetic interlude and multiple scenes from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was programming education as performance art as Wittgenstein's Ladder, so even in the Ruby community _why had contemporaries and inspirations. And the graphics demo community has been at it since computers had monitors.

So again I say you and your sentiment are utterly wrong, in every conceivable axis upon one could evaluate it. Your self-centered disregard for everything outside your immediate field of view is a detriment to, in both technical and non-technical pursuits. It is an attitude endemic in this industry and on this website, and one of the reasons I so rarely frequent this place.

[chrisrhoden]

> In our generation you can find tons of people doing performance art with code and custom hardware. The music scene is positively bursting at the seams, as is the gaming community.

This is specifically addressed in the top post. You're attacking a strawman. Nobody is saying that this stuff isn't valuable, it's just fundamentally different from what this post is talking about.

I won't go so far as to say that you're wrong, but you're really being an asshole right now.

[KirinDave]

> You're attacking a strawman.

No, I'm attacking a false dichotomy. Anyone who cares to talk to Daft Punk about how they do what they do will see they are technicians as well as musicians.

And if you're saying performance art ABOUT software with software as the subject should be held distinct in some arbitrary and rarefied sense, then I provided an example for that too.

[chrisrhoden]

Are you referring to your Jim Wierich anecdote? I'm pretty sure he would agree with the distinction being made here, and I am certain that art historians would.

Jim was the absolute best speaker I have seen when he gave a presentation about git at the Ruby Hoedown. His motivations for making the talk interesting were very different from the perceived motivations for the nature of the poignant guide - Jim sought to increase understanding. _why seems not to have given too many shits about that pursuit.

[unalone]

Sure. You're not wrong.

I'm not a programmer. I'm barely even a member of this community. You're far more involved in this world than I am; you know names and see projects that never cross my path. My understanding of your world is shallow. I wouldn't blame that on the community, actually; that's all my fault. :-)

Let me argue from a different, slightly better-thought-out angle. It's not that no programmers do artistic things. Indeed, there are fascinating people using code pretty much everywhere, and there have been for decades. What made _why unique was that many of his projects were aimed at introducing new people to programming, in a plethora of different ways which felt more organic and intimate than your average "learn to code" resource. Codecademy, which enjoyed a tremendous success over the last year, struck me as a slightly less whimsical version of _why's TryRuby, which always struck me as particularly ingenious.

Plenty of interesting programmers don't concern themselves much with reading out to amateurs, whereas _why had the (Poignant) Guide and TryRuby and Shoes. And _why wrote, not just about the code itself, but about the culture; some of the most interesting parts of the (Poignant) Guide concerned not the Ruby language, but the Ruby culture, which he made out to be particularly enthusiastic and welcoming. (While he was a member of the community, he did a fantastic job of encouraging young idiots like myself; I received an email from him 5 years ago while I hated my environment and what I was doing and it helped me out tremendously.)

It seemed, and still seems now, like he was making an incredible effort to reach out to a sort of person that normally was turned off by the way programming worked, and convince them to give programming a try anyway. At the same time, the things he said which were critical about the community rang true with those of us who didn't feel like proper parts of it – I, as I've already admitted, am not really a programmer and my approaches to building things tend to run contrary to how most programmers work. Yet with him, and with people who were especially inspired by his work, my way of doing things has felt like a valid and worthwhile approach to making things, and I've been able to feel like a bit more part of a community because of it.

I wish there were more people like _why doing that. The programming world still feels like a cold and forbidding place to those of us who aren't already within it. It's a shame that it feels that way. I don't think that it has to be.

[jacquesm]

> "Our modern software community", referring to the current generation of the software community

How about the current (or probably already the previous) generation of Ruby programmers? I think that would fit the bill a lot better. And that probably would need the word 'subset' in there somewhere.

[unalone]

It would. I wasn't expecting this thread to turn as heated as it abruptly became, or I'd have thought my words out more carefully. Forgive my sloppiness?

[jacquesm]

> Forgive my sloppiness?

Nothing to forgive, it's just something that needed some qualifiers. Talking in absolutes is always risky. Good to see you back on HN!