why the lucky stiff
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (May 2009) |
| Unknown (alias why the lucky stiff) | |
 _why at RubyConf
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| Other names | why, _why |
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| Occupation | Ruby programmer, author |
| Known for | Why'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.
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[edit] Works
[edit] 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.
[edit] Code
_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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] External links
- hackety.org, _why's current blog about artful computer hacking and the successor to RedHanded
- Episode of the Ruby on Rails Podcast about Camping
- A list of _why's open-source projects (which points to a new location for source code)
- Shoes Roundup: Ruby GUI App Development Goodness, lists a few resources for Ruby/Shoes development
- Soundtrack for the book, Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby
- RedHanded, a defunct blog dedicated to Ruby culture
- .c( whytheluckystiff )o., _why's personal blog
- (.~) what a quiet stiff (~.), a photo and image blog by _why
- RubyKaigi2008 Goodies, _why's illustration used in RubyKaigi2008 (Japanese page)
- RubyKaigi2007 Goodies, _why's illustration(s) used in RubyKaigi2007 (Japanese page)
[edit] References
- ^ RailsConf Keynote: Why the Lucky Stiff
- ^ O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2005
- ^ Michael Fitzgerald (2007). Learning Ruby. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596529864.
- ^ Leonard Richardson (2006). Ruby Cookbook. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596523696.
- ^ "Getting Your Feet Wet With Ruby On Rails". 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20061231080418/http://www.webmonkey.com/05/28/index4a.html.
- ^ "The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky". Apress. 2005. ISBN 978-1590595008. http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781590595008.
- ^ a b Advanced Rails. O'Reilly. 2007. p. 235. ISBN 0596510322.
- ^ "Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional. Apress. 2007. p. 443. ISBN 978-1-59059-766-8.
- ^ Standard Library documentation for Syck
- ^ InfoQ: Ruby Shoes for lightweight GUIs, graphics and animation
- ^ O'Reilly Network: Shoes Meets Merb: Driving a GUI App through Web Services in Ruby
- ^ David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto. The Ruby Programming Language. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0596516178. http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516178/.
