_Why the Lucky Stiff
(2 mins reading time)
Nope, it's not a typo and it's not a question...
Why the Lucky Stiff or _why as often abbreviated, is a famous programmer in the Ruby (programming language) community, and he's also described as one of the most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers in the world. but _why is that? ;)
_why was an artist, and his medium was the software. He didn't seek fame, he only wanted to help people in learning how to program while having fun. He had a tremendous impact on the ruby community creating numerous projects that he took care of to be super easy for newbie people in Ruby.
In 2004, _why published the most bizarre and lovely programming manual called why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby which brought the Ruby language to the masses. The book is basically an adventure of two cartoon foxes and a magical elf with a pet ham that makes star monkeys. The book is considered a landmark and is unusual among programming books in that it includes quite a lot of strange humor and narrative side tracks which are sometimes completely unrelated to the topic. Many motifs have become inside jokes in the Ruby community, such as references to the words "chunky bacon".
With a musical soundtrack for his book!
_why wanted to be anonymous, when people started to pierce into his personal life, he committed Infosuicide in 2009, he deleted his twitter and his projects repositories, mirrors only now remains of him. His famous book is available in PDF and HTML here.
