> Eyles and some of his fellow Consciousness IIIers regard computer programming as a fine craft that might some day be elevated to the status of an art. “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging.”
As I read this, I was aware that there is a steaming pile of JavaScript a single Alt-Tab away on my laptop. I think there's a profound lesson here - buried in the path between these dreams of programmers in the 70s and today's reality.
This was a really good read. Gave me something to think about.
Whytheluckystiff wrote some Ruby code that can only be described as good poetry (including at least one project used in production in some places, the Camping web framework) circa 2005. I'm sure some people write poetry-level code today (obviously the folks at shadertoy.com, but they're writing in a classical style, and I'm sure someone's writing code poetry that could not have been written before 2020).
As far as I understand, he quit his public life when someone hunted down and published his real name and address. He removed his website and github, which contained his various writings, some of which had names with "tutorial" or "guide" in them but all of which were at least 80% works of literature and at most 20% works of technical documentation. Not sure I would call it "ragequitting".
A few years ago he published a sort of absurdist goodbye (as a live-updating printer spool) which Steve Klabnik collected into a 95-page PDF here:
https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE
His blog contained many small snippets of code that were definitely meant to be consumed as poetry, they are easy to spot because of all the colors and shapes and sometimes animations:
But my own experience of learning from him how to experience code as poetry mostly involved around using Camping in production for some small side projects and needing to explore some bits of its code because of practical reasons:
Closure, the printer spool “book” in question, is one of the best works on the philosophy of software engineering and life on the modern internet ever written.
What's so hard about understanding somebody's desire for their art to be in the world without violating the boundary between that and their personal life?
It is difficult for many people. Whenever I read about W, I see people offended there was (what they consider) an overreaction, and that everything was deleted. Personally I only see that as exerting extreme caution after something really bad happened. Beyond that, it is their right to share or stop sharing when it stops being fun.
People seem to have forgotten the old hacker ethos: doing stuff for fun. Many people are more now attracted by publicity and fame than by the fun part - look at how many want to be influencers! Or even worse: by extracting value from than fun spirit - look at social networking being used to create fame by manufacturing outrage!
Some people who do things for fun may also want to be forgotten. They just care about the fun. Yet many people think they have a right to whatever they create. It's hard not to see that.
Personally, I see that because I do not want any of the stuff I do online have any link to what I do offline. I do not want my identity leaked either.
Yet here on HN when I will delete my account, my posts will stay. And I can't edit them in any way. So much for being about hacker values!
I think many people who weren't following his art in real time make the reasonable misunderstanding that his works are code and documentation participating in the vast human project of Open Source Software, since they tended to have names like "_why's (poignant) guide to ruby" and not more descriptive names like "cartoon foxes and how mad I reacted in front of my expanded family that time when my mom said my sister uses cocaine and how she didn't end up killing herself and stuff like that and some ruby code".
I mean, he did write some widely used open source. I think the most popular yaml parser? And an html parser or generator or something that some people were still using but most already moved to another one inspired by it? And there was a community around projects like Camping and Shoes?
So less-involved people judged him like they judged the left-pad guy (which, I mean, was in his full right to remove all his code from npm, but was a bit unkind to the vast community of left-pad dependent day-job developers).
But almost everything he did was 99% art, and his persona shared a lot of things you might not want your boss or mom to read, so I think he should be judged more like Kafka requesting his books to be burned.
Camping and Shoes were also 99% art, and I think nobody who was actively part of their communities was very much hurt and the sentiment in their communities was more of worrying for his well being.
But he let it be known that he's ok and just wanted to quit so they just let him be.
The outrage was mostly from people reading "popular open source developer deletes his github and vanishes" without context.
And yeah, when I was 16 I used to post on HN and for some stupid reason all my comments began with "Hi, I'm <full name>" and it's the most embarrassing thing ever, and Google will never forget...
About your HN, Google will never forget but maybe you could nicely ask HN for some understanding (I mean, you were a minor!) or in the worst case try to GPDR you way through?
Tbh, for any piece of great poetry or prose or code, there are nine others which are crap, as noted by Sturgeon's Law. The steaming piles of yesterday have been forgotten, with only the memorable works remaining; thus creating an illusion of a Golden Age.
>It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging.
As a programmer who loves Russian lit, this hit close to home. It's a dream of mine to one day read Tolstoy's drafts of his predecessor novel to War & Peace ("The Decembrists"), but my professor informed me that the copies that exist are entirely in russian. One day.
The 19th century contained writing like the writing of Gogol. It also contained writing such as dunning notices, calling cards, semi-literate love notes, graffiti, army regulations, and shopping lists. The literary quality of most of the latter may have been deplorable, but it certainly does not detract from the merit of the former.
As I read this, I was aware that there is a steaming pile of JavaScript a single Alt-Tab away on my laptop. I think there's a profound lesson here - buried in the path between these dreams of programmers in the 70s and today's reality.
This was a really good read. Gave me something to think about.