Jonathan Gillette, known by the pseudonymwhy the lucky stiff, is a writer, cartoonist, artist, and programmer notable for his work with the Ruby programming language. Annie Lowrey described him as "one of the most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers" in the world. Along with Yukihiro Matsumoto and David Heinemeier Hansson, he was seen as one of the key figures in the Ruby community. _why made a presentation enigmatically titled "A Starry Afternoon, a Sinking Symphony, and the Polo Champ Who Gave It All Up for No Reason Whatsoever" at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention. It explored how to teach programming and make the subject more appealing to adolescents. _why gave a presentation and performed with his band, the Thirsty Cups, at RailsConf in 2006. On 19 August 2009, _why's accounts on Twitter and GitHub and his personally maintained websites went offline. Shortly before he disappeared, why the lucky stiff tweeted, "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more." _why's colleagues have assembled collections of his writings and projects. Later his website briefly went back online with a detailed explanation of his plans for the future.
Works
Books
His best known work is Why's Guide to Ruby, which "teaches Ruby with stories." Paul Adams of Webmonkey describes its eclectic style as resembling a "collaboration between Stan Lem and Ed Lear". Chapter three was published in The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky. In April 2013, a complete book attributed to Jonathan Gillette was digitally released via the website whytheluckystiff.net and the . It was presented as individual files of PCL without any instruction on how to assemble the print outs into a book. Based on timestamps from the git repository, Steve Klabnik compiled the pages in the order in which they were released into a PDF file which he titled CLOSURE since the book provides some resolution to the story. Although no authorship is claimed in either the book or the git repository, the writing style and content are remarkably comparable to that of Jonathan Gillette and the storyline references certain events and the text includes the names Jonathan Gillette and _why.
Code tutorials
Try Ruby is an online interactive learning tool that provided a browser-based Ruby shell and an instructor that guided beginners through their first steps in Ruby. Since Why's disappearance, the project has been continued in spirit at Try Ruby revision 4. His final project before his internet retirement, Hackety Hack, is a Ruby- and Shoes-based environment intended to bring the power, freedom, and simplicity of BASIC programming to the current generation, with a particular focus on being accessible to children.
Code
_why is the author of several libraries and applications, most of them written in or for Ruby. from Why's Guide to Ruby
_why never publicly revealed his own identity while he was active as "why the lucky stiff". Shortly before he left the public eye, an anonymous blog was posted, identifying him as Jonathan Gillette, and offering detailed information about his identity, including his schooling, his address, his membership in the band The Child Who Was a Keyhole, and the identity of his spouse. At the time, he did not make any statement on his being outed. While his offline identity was considered common knowledge in the Ruby coding community, it remained unconfirmed until a 2012 article in Slate magazine quoted a statement from a fellow programmer saying, "Jonathan is _why, he is fine, and he just wants to be left alone."
