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A year later, I'm still bitter about this.

There are very few people I've ever admired as much as this guy. He had a fantastic attitude towards programming, absolutely one of a kind.

If he had to sacrifice that for the sake of his real life, I could accept that. But if he really wanted privacy, he could have just stopped participating and let himself fade into obscurity.

Instead, he threw a tantrum and nuked all his sites. He didn't want privacy, he wanted to drop a big drama bomb on everyone. He's not the first person I've known to pull the disappearing act and it's not something I admire or want to celebrate, it's just jeuvenile and petty.

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With the persona he had created I think it would've been sadder to watch it fade into obscurity rather than go out with a bang.

At the very least, he could have done something dramatic yet positive. Pulling down all his code like that, I really think he was out to spite everyone.

When someone gives you a bunch of stuff that you are able to use for a while and then decides to retract it that's still a net positive to you.

You have no right to continue to demand he makes his work available to you.

> I really think he was out to spite everyone.

If that were the case he would have never written it in the first place.

> If that were the case he would have never written it in the first place.

Or written it with some license that stipulates it cannot be used in either closed source or any open source applications, only for 'educational' use. Worse, he could have tried to do it retroactively.

I doubt he had that intention.

>You have no right to continue to demand he makes his work available to you.

He has every right to demand it.

I have no idea what he was thinking about then when he took his stuff down, so you may be right. But having read his work for a few years I don't think it was spite; that just doesn't seem like him.

He worked for years on code and writings with free licenses - so for the most part he didn't really "delete" his work, but rather just stopped distributing it. He must have been aware of this fact when he took his sites/accounts down.

In fact, I didn't hear of _why until he disappeared, and @jresig made his testimonial to him. Now retrospectively, I admire his creativity and humor... including an appreciation for his virtual "death", if it was meant to be a part of his overall character.

That said, I appreciate that people have made all of his works available online, and those projects stand on their own merits. I don't find much value in celebrating _why himself, since that's his personal project, not ours.

On the contrary. _why is an idea more than a man. On a certain level I'd say he closed up shop to make the character a shared memory rather than an individual.

You seem to imply that there is no option between those two extremes.

However, what about a nice goodbye message, handing over the running sites to some predecessor(s)?

I always said he was just burning his guitar.

Exactly! Also, I think his disappearance was a strong statement, too (we just don't know what it is). He appeared to be whimsical, but if you read his writings (since I don't know any Ruby this is all I can do) you quickly see that he is anything but. It is obvious that a lot of thought and planning has gone into those "whimsical" essays.

Do you have a link to his blog? (It's a hard thing to search for.)

AFAIK, he didn't have a blog proper. But his writing can be found here: http://viewsourcecode.org/why/. I reread The Poignant Guide every now and then.

He did not owe you a damn thing.

The moderation in this thread is the weirdest. _why seems to bring out controversy like nothing else, not even politics does.

You probably haven't been to a tea party protest

Rarely do our heroes owe us anything. Greatness requires a higher standard than simply being debt-free.

A year later, this hardly seems like something to get worked up over. Wasn't part of his popularity due to not taking himself too seriously?

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