Resurrecting _why's Dream
16 points by gioele
16 points by gioele
It stands out to have a CLAUDE.md file in the middle of a repo ostensibly dedicated to _why's aesthetic, as LLM code generation seems like something in absolute diametric opposition to anything _why championed
Tips:
This might sound like cheating. It isn't—it's recognizing where the platform is going.
It’s not X, it’s Y.
No boilerplate, no imports, no build system Every line of boilerplate is friction. Every import statement is a context switch. Every framework concept is something you have to hold in your head instead of your actual problem.
Author is really consistent in style, always group things nicely in 3s. Almost all paragraphs have 3 or 4 sentences…
_why decided to step away and I don't think we should make assumptions about what he would or would not do today, or how he would see the technology of today. _why had a lasting impact of building software to make it accessible to more. To me, what he was championing is very much in line with what LLMs do today: opening up the field of programming to people who have not programmed today.
And to quote from the poignant guide to ruby:
You will be writing stories for a machine. Creative skills, people. Deduction. Reason. Nodding intelligently. The language will become a tool for you to better connect your mind to the world.
In fact, the guide pretty much starts out with celebrating how much like English Ruby sounds like:
My conscience won’t let me call Ruby a computer language. That would imply that the language works primarily on the computer’s terms. That the language is designed to accomodate the computer, first and foremost. That therefore, we, the coders, are foreigners, seeking citizenship in the computer’s locale. It’s the computer’s language and we are translators for the world.
But what do you call the language when your brain begins to think in that language? When you start to use the language’s own words and colloquialisms to express yourself. Say, the computer can’t do that. How can it be the computer’s language? It is ours, we speak it natively!
We can no longer truthfully call it a computer language. It is coderspeak. It is the language of our thoughts.
I would love to hear how _why sees the modern world, but he was clearly very interested to bring new folks to Ruby and programming, something that LLMs and agents are doing today.
As far as we know, he hasn't died. His real name is on Wikipedia. Someone could ask him if they wanted to, but this is pretty much opposed to his aesthetic of whimsy and human goofiness.
Do you ever feel like you might be rehashing vi vs emacs editor wars by railing against the use of agents?