A poignant look back at why the lucky stiff‘s legacy

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A (poignant) look back to why the lucky stiff ’s legacy

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I wanted my talk to be poignant and see tears in your eyes, so I asked the conference organisers if they could add an onion with every ticket.

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Apparently that’s not possible. I am going to talk about a programmer called “why the lucky stiff”, or “why” for short. Show of hands please, who knows about who I’m talking about?

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not a nickname Ruby for about 13 years

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13 years ago (2006) I discovered this programming language we all love On this website called Try Ruby you typed code and it was interpreted instataneously It was a small and fun tutorial to learn this awesome new programming language. I was both amazed by Ruby and by this online tool: how could it actually launch Ruby code from JavaScript? And what are the security implications? The start of a love story

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“why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby” free online PDF

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actual Ruby code this was a revelation for me: I was learning this amazing language and having fun ham, elves, tiger in a suit, poems, stories, … quirky fun meta

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both try ruby and the guide were made by why 2006 RailsConf

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Music Drawings Poetry Videos Card games Blog Programming environment for kids A LOT of Ruby libraries a programming language A key figure in the Ruby community

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drink 19th of august 2009 Infosuicide His websites, his twitter account, his projects, his open source libraries No explanation

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trying to find out if he was OK kept his given name hidden outed a few months before he disappeared with personal details about his life online perhaps one of the reasons behind his infosuicide fortunately he’s OK, just decided to shut everything off

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Shocked Sad angry and saw it as a sign of disrespect

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4 years later (2013) a series of printing instructions pages appeared on his website Steve Klabnick called it CLOSURE talks about being anonymous, erasing your identity, your work talks about the pains of programming last piece of art

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10 years later show of hands please people collected what they could shared the maintenance of his projects most of his projects are kept as they were

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some are actively maintained like Shoes to create GUI apps Hackety Hack programming environment for kids New life

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may not look like not much is left HTML parser that inspired nokogiri (Hpricot) a tiny web framework that inspired Sinatra (Camping) using Ruby in creative ways

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he was an explorer pushed the boundaries using meta programming in creative ways on the other hand, as an explorer: not made to last not his thing to have common style tests collaboration

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A lot of people learned from why. I realised programming didn’t have to be boring enterprise solutions. It can also be: easy fun smart creative silly quirky

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I’d like to suggest an extra acronym that we can add to defined the Ruby community

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Why has shaped the idea that Ruby was special. No other programming language has why. Ruby is also very unique and can be weird, quirky, silly, creative.

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drink be creative in your own way push your own boundaries ; Doesn’t have to last ; you can throw everything away Don’t have to be known ; you can stay anonymous

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More importantly, have fun. In his keynote matz said that the reason he created Ruby was “Just for Fun” And we wouldn’t be here if it was not to have fun.