2012 September

I recently wrote an article named _Why Documentary at Rubyconf 2012, Denver reminding people about this person that called himself "_Why", who decided to vanish in August of 2009, taking all his work with him, essentially committing virtual suicide.

It has attracted lots of trolls and haters at the comments section, more discussion than I anticipated, questioning why we praise someone that was crazy enough to destroy all his work, that is obviously not a good role model, and that compared to other titans of programming has done little and with less quality?

Then, today I heard about this website about Ruby Dramas - that I'm not linking. I don't know the author and I even think this is just for fun, but the reactions from the trolls and haters aren't. Essentially it links a few of what we call "Ruby Dramas", the discussions that trolls and haters call a waste of time, a demonstration of the immaturity and childish behavior of Ruby programmers.

Update: This article generated some heat. I've published another post with some of my thoughts about the subject later.

RubyConf Brazil 2012 has just finished but the US Rubyconf 2012 will begin on November 1-3, 2012, at Denver, Colorado. While I was finishing my post about the event, I came across this trailer for Why's Documentary, to be released during the US Rubyconf, if I understood correctly.

Now, if you're new to the Ruby ecosystem, you may have not heard about this character named "Why, The Lucky Stiff". I think 2 of the best articles about him were written by a fellow Brazilian Rubyist, Diogo Terror to Smashing Magazine in 2010, titled _Why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius and Annie Lowrey for Slate Where’s _why?.

He inspired an entire first generation of Rubyist around the turn of the century. He wasn't just a programmer, he was a craftsman, literally. The only one I accept calling himself an "artist" within our programming world. His most famous work is the book Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby used by many famous Rubyists you know when they first found about Ruby.

Then in August 19, 2009 he vanished.

If you're a Rubyist you know the meme that "Ruby allows you to write beautiful code".

Several within the community have tried to define what "Beautiful Ruby Code" is, and even though most were successful showing us really beaultiful code, I don't think I saw someone actually being able to communicate the concept of "Beauty" yet.

Comes TED. If you know me, you know that I've been completely addicted to it for years now, all themes of TED inspires me. And tonight, while having dinner, I watched the great Richard Seymour (no, he is not a programmer) talking about this very subject and I was blown away.

Find the video below, but let me add a few words of my own. Specially in our small world of programmers and technologists, we have lots of discussions around "Form" vs "Function", as if we should choose one over the other, or as if we should balance one against the other.

Rubyconf Brasil 2012 was a blast!

I personally still pinch myself every time when I think about it, when I decided to commit to this endeavour back in 2008 neither I nor anyone would ever think that we would be able to make more than 1 Ruby Conference in Brazil. But against all odds we have been able to pull it off. 5 years have passed and every year is an improvement over the previous one. Locaweb has been a fantastic partner, and I don't think any other company in Brazil would have the same level of commitment, delivering more than expected year after year.

This year we had an astounding 750 attendees at Frei Caneca Convention Center and with the help of Eventials we added at least 500 more watching in real time during the 2 days of the conference. We also had the most dense Rubyconf Brasil ever with a mind boggling 31 talks, 36 speakers out of which 14 came from outside of Brazil.

We, of the Rubyconf Brasil staff, hope that everyone found something you really liked and that everybody had a great time. And I personally wish that if you liked it, you keep helping the Ruby community to grow larger in Latin America.