Jonathan Gillette, known by the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

why the lucky stiff (often abbreviated as _why), is a writer, cartoonist, artist, and programmer notable for his work with the

Ruby programming language Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language which supports multiple programming paradigms. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including p ...

Annie Lowrey Annie M. Lowrey (; born July 22, 1984) is an American journalist who writes on politics and economic policy for ''The Atlantic''. Previously, Lowrey covered economic policy for the ''New York Times'' and prior to that was the Moneybox columnist ...

described him as "one of the most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers" in the world. Along with

Yukihiro Matsumoto , also known as Matz, is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). His demeanor has brough ...

and

David Heinemeier Hansson David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer, and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm Basecamp. Hansson co-wrote ''Agil ...

, he was seen as one of the key figures in the Ruby community. His pseudonym might allude to the exclamation "Why, the lucky stiff!" from ''

The Fountainhead ''The Fountainhead'' is a 1943 novel by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, her first major literary success. The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to comp ...

'' by Ayn Rand. _why made a presentation enigmatically 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 The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) was an American annual convention for the discussion of free and open-source software. It was organized by publisher O'Reilly Media and was held each summer, mostly in Portland, Oregon, from 1999 ...

. It explored how to teach programming and make the subject more appealing to

adolescents Adolescence () is a transitional stage of Developmental biology, physical and psychological Human development (biology), development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majo ...

. _why gave a presentation and performed with his band, the Thirsty Cups, at RailsConf in 2006. On 19 August 2009, _why's accounts on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

and his personally maintained websites went offline. Shortly before he disappeared, _why tweeted, "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more." _why's colleagues have assembled collections of his writings and projects. Later, his website briefly went back online with a detailed explanation of his plans for the future.

Works

Books

His best known work is '' Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby'', which "teaches Ruby with stories." Paul Adams of

Webmonkey Webmonkey was an online tutorial website composed of various articles on building webpages from backend to frontend. The site covered many aspects of developing on the web like programming, database, multimedia, and setting up web storefronts. The ...

describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear". Chapter three was published in ''The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by

Joel Spolsky Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of ''Joel on Software'', a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software Trello. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Exce ...

''. In April 2013, a complete book attributed to Jonathan Gillette was digitally released via the website whytheluckystiff.net (which has since changed ownership) and th
GitHub repository cwales
It was presented as individual files of PCL (Printer Command Language) without any instruction on how to assemble the print-outs into a book. Based on timestamps from the git repository, Steve Klabnik compiled the pages in the order in which they were released into a PDF file which he titled CLOSURE since the book provides some resolution to the story. Although no authorship is claimed in either the book or the git repository, the writing style and content are very similar to those of Gillette, the storyline references certain events, and the text includes the names Jonathan Gillette and _why.

Code tutorials

''Try Ruby'' is an online interactive learning tool that provided a browser-based Ruby

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

and an instructor that guided beginners through their first steps in Ruby. Since _why's disappearance, the project has been continued in spirit at Try Ruby revision 4. His final project before his internet retirement, '' Hackety Hack'', is a Ruby- and

Shoes A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot. They are often worn with a sock. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration and fashion. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture t ...

-based environment intended to bring the power, freedom, and simplicity of BASIC programming to the current generation, with a particular focus on being accessible to children.

Code

_why is the author of several libraries and applications, most of them written in or for Ruby. Why's self portrait

*''

Camping Camping is an outdoor activity involving overnight stays away from home, either without shelter or using basic shelter such as a tent, or a recreational vehicle. Typically, participants leave developed areas to spend time outdoors in more na ...

'', a microframework inspired by

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and we ...

and based on

Markaby Markaby is a small Ruby library for writing HTML code in pure Ruby. It is an alternative to templating languages such as ERb and HAML which combine Ruby code with some form of markup. It was developed by the computer programmer " why the lucky ...

that is less than 4 kilobytes. *''Park Place'', a "nearly complete clone of the

Amazon S3 Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its ...

web service." * ''Hobix'', a

YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...

-based weblog application written in Ruby. * '' Hpricot'', an

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lat ...

* ''

'' (markup as Ruby), a

DSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric dig ...

to generate valid HTML using Ruby blocks and

methods Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...

instead of tags. * ''MouseHole'', a personal web proxy that can rewrite the web ''à la''

Greasemonkey Greasemonkey is a userscript manager made available as a Mozilla Firefox extension. It enables users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to web page content after or before the page is loaded in the browser (also known as augmen ...

* the ''RedCloth'' library, which implements the

Textile Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

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 since Ruby version 1.8.0. * ''

'', a UI toolkit "for Making Web-like Desktop Apps" * ''unHoly'', a Ruby

bytecode Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (norma ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

bytecode converter, for running Ruby applications on the Google Application Engine * ''potion'', a tiny, fast programming language with a

JIT compiler In computing, just-in-time (JIT) compilation (also dynamic translation or run-time compilations) is a way of executing computer code that involves compilation during execution of a program (at run time) rather than before execution. This may cons ...

, closure support and an object model built around

mixin In object-oriented programming languages, a mixin (or mix-in) is a class that contains methods for use by other classes without having to be the parent class of those other classes. How those other classes gain access to the mixin's methods depen ...

s * ''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

. 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.

Real identity

_why never publicly revealed his own identity while he was active as "why the lucky stiff". Shortly before he left the public eye, an anonymous blog was posted,. identifying him as Jonathan Gillette, and offering detailed information about his identity, including his schooling, his address, his membership in the band ''The Child Who Was a Keyhole'', and the identity of his spouse. At the time, he did not make any statement on his being outed. While his offline identity was considered common knowledge in the Ruby coding community, it remained unconfirmed until a 2012 article in ''Slate'' magazine quoted a statement from a fellow programmer saying, "Jonathan is _why, he is fine, and he just wants to be left alone."

References

External links

A video of _why's public lecture at the Art and Code Conference
March 2009
Episode of the Ruby on Rails Podcast about Camping

* ttps://hobix.com Hobix* ttp://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/soundtrack/ Soundtrack for the book, ''Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby''
RedHanded
a defunct blog dedicated to Ruby culture
RubyKaigi2008 Goodies
_why's illustration used in RubyKaigi2008 (Japanese page)

_why's illustration(s) used in RubyKaigi2007 (Japanese page)
_why's estate

Internet Archive of _Why's Complete Printer Spool

Why The Lucky Stiff
short documentary film released in 2019 {{Authority control American bloggers Free software programmers Web developers Computer programmers Living people Ruby (programming language) Year of birth missing (living people) American technology writers Place of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American non-fiction writers