I recently thought of using Shoes, _why’s minimalistic GUI toolkit, for a project, and found that the domain wouldn’t resolve. At the time, I thought it was nothing more than a glitch in the Matrix. Had I searched around, I would have discovered much earlier the surprising truth: On August 19th, “why the lucky stiff” winked out of existence, taking everything he’d ever created with him. All of his web sites, his projects, his github account… gone, with no explanation.

Given that the man himself is unavailable for comment, theories abound as to why (or rather, _why) he departed so suddenly, and with so many of his projects left half-finished. Personally, I think it’s possible that _why planned to do this right from the start, as an exercise in “lifting up” the Ruby community and bringing it closer together; observe how quickly his many projects have been picked up by others, who have started developing them at a remarkable pace. _why’s departure created a tremendous vacuum of talent, one that dozens of Ruby hackers are now eager to fill. Was this the intended effect? It certainly seems to be a Good Thing… though I don’t think the sheer personality that _why gave Ruby will ever be duplicated.