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why the lucky stiff

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Unknown (alias why the lucky stiff)
_why at RubyConf
Other nameswhy, _why
Occupation(s)Ruby programmer, author
Known forWhy's (poignant) Guide to Ruby, Camping

why the lucky stiff (often known simply as why, _why) is the persona of a 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 is 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.

The latest nomination of this very page for deletion led Tim Bray, co author of the XML specification, and John Resig author of the jQuery javascript library to prominently defend it's existence.

  • Retain _why is incredibly notable, and influential, within the Ruby programming community. He is a hacker of the purest form - creating works out of necessity and practicality, completely influencing and driving the entirety of the Ruby sphere. He's given a number of talks or performances (and not just random user group talks but major talks at major conferences) Keynote Presentations at RailsConf 2006, Concert at SXSWi 2006, and OSCON 2005 Presentation. Additionally he is the sole (or primary) creator of three separate projects which all have their own Wikipedia entries - each of which have seen considerable press: Hackety Hack (Press), Camping (microframework) (Press), and Why's_(poignant)_Guide_to_Ruby (Press). It would be an absolute travesty to have the page removed at this point, especially considering the sheer breadth and influence of work that he has performed. --Jeresig (talk) 17:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Works

Tutorials

His best known work is Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby[3], which "teaches Ruby with stories." [4] Paul Adams of Webmonkey describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear".[5]. Chapter three was published in The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky[6].

Try Ruby is an online interactive learning tool that provides a browser-based Ruby shell and an instructor that guides beginners through their first steps in Ruby.

His latest project, Hackety Hack, is a Ruby- and Mozilla- based environment used to teach programming to children.

Code

_why's self-portrait from Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby

_why is the author of several libraries and applications, most of them written in or for Ruby.

  • Camping, a microframework inspired by Ruby on Rails and based on Markaby that is less than 4 kilobytes.[7]
  • Park Place, a "nearly complete clone of the Amazon S3 web service."[7]
  • Hobix, a YAML-based weblog application written in Ruby.
  • Hpricot, an HTML parser.
  • Markaby, (markup as Ruby), a DSL to generate valid HTML using Ruby blocks and methods instead of tags.[8]
  • MouseHole, a personal web proxy that can rewrite the web à la Greasemonkey.
  • the RedCloth library, which implements the Textile markup language.
  • the Sandbox, a library for managing several Ruby environments in a single process.
  • Syck, a YAML library for C, Ruby, and several other languages. Syck has been a part of standard Ruby libraries[9] since Ruby version 1.8.0.
  • Shoes, a UI toolkit "for Making Web-like Desktop Apps"[10][11]
  • unHoly A Ruby-bytecode-to-Python-bytecode converter, for running Ruby applications on the Google application engine.
  • potion, a tiny, fast programming language with a JIT compiler, closure support and an object model built around mixins.
  • bloopsaphone, a crossplatform chiptune-like synth, based on PortAudio with a Ruby frontend.

Art

He has illustrated The Ruby Programming Language, authored by David Flanagan and Yukihiro Matsumoto.[12] 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.

References

  1. ^ RailsConf Keynote: Why the Lucky Stiff
  2. ^ O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2005
  3. ^ Michael Fitzgerald (2007). Learning Ruby. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596529864.
  4. ^ Leonard Richardson (2006). Ruby Cookbook. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596523696.
  5. ^ Paul Adams, ed. (2003). "Getting Your Feet Wet With Ruby On Rails".
  6. ^ "The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky". Apress. 2005. ISBN 978-1590595008.
  7. ^ a b Advanced Rails. O'Reilly. 2007. p. 235. ISBN 0596510322.
  8. ^ "Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional. Apress. 2007. p. 443. ISBN 978-1-59059-766-8.
  9. ^ Standard Library documentation for Syck
  10. ^ InfoQ: Ruby Shoes for lightweight GUIs, graphics and animation
  11. ^ O'Reilly Network: Shoes Meets Merb: Driving a GUI App through Web Services in Ruby
  12. ^ David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto. The Ruby Programming Language. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0596516178.
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