Joel Berger

Courtesy of the Hacker News Twitter feed, I read a really interesting piece from slate.

Where's _why? by Annie Lowrey

Ostensibly, the article is about the former Ruby developer, enthusiast, mascot and resident oddball named "_why". He dramatically disappeared from the open-source world dramatically one day, taking all of his software and writings with him. But that's not the only theme of the article.

The article's driving thread is the author learning some basic programming, and learning in part from _why. The more interesting thing is the outsider-become-closer-to-insider perspective on the hacker culture. This include the response of the Ruby community to _why leaving and the effort to find, save, and adopt his works.

Read it, I found it thought provoking and a great read.