Some say that great men are recognized only after their passing ("You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself becoming the villain"). Maybe his last stroke of genius was to commit "virtual suicide", by erasing every digital trace of his existence - he actually deleted all his work, his projects, his source codes that were available online. Thanks to technologies such as Git (by the way, this was a great showcase of the recovering capabilities of distributed versioning systems) almost all of the deleted material was recovered and you can find them in places such as here. But the fact that he disappeared and his whereabouts are still unknown kept the myth going and 3 years later he is still remembered.
In 2007 I was conducting a series of interviews with several famous Rubyists of our community. And of course, I did send an email to Why himself. And he responded in a very unexpected way. I think it's time to disclose the unabridged content of the email so you understand his exotic personality.
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Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:38:59 -0500 From: why the lucky stiff <why@whytheluckystiff.net> To: fakita@bccl.com.br Subject: SPAM: Re: Invitation for an Interview for Brazilian Blog On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 10:28:25AM -0300, Fabio Akita wrote: > First of all let me introduce myself, my name is Fabio Akita, I've written > the first brazilian Rails book called "Repensando a Web com Rails". I have a > very well known blog in Brazil called "Akita on Rails": It is great to meet you, Fabio. I love accomplished Brazilians and try to fill my life with any kind of Brazilian I can find. I also try to drink milk from a bag as often as I can. Do you like apricots? I like mediterranean apricots only. But I am willing to entertain new forms of apricot, as they become available. > I adore your work! I love creative stuff and you're an artist. I appreciate your remarks, but I have a hard time believing that anyone would like my art. I will definitely die without recognition and few will ever see the work I do. But I like it that way a lot!! One of the worst things a person can get in life is recognition. But a scalp rash is very, very bad as well. I have had some serious scalp rashes and I also have thrown up blood quite a few times along the way. > So here goes the invitation: would you be available for an interview to my > blog? We could do the usual way via Skype or Gtalk where I can record the > chat. Nothing formal or fancy, just a conversation between two tech geeks > that anyone could enjoy. I'm afraid I am currently in hiding, my friend Fabio. As you may know, I am operating as a freelance professor right now. I am unaccredited, unlicensed with an ill-advised curriculum. There are no international laws protecting freelance professors from imprisonment and deportation, so am I forced into hiding. Fortunately, I have found a rather remarkable hiding place which is quite safe and has very colorful wallpaper and animal pelts. I also cannot do interviews unless they are submitted in handwriting. I also cannot respond to interviews in anything but handwriting. There are several reasons for this rule, but the foremost reason is that I like making people do unnecessary and frivolous things. And forcing interviews to be handwritten is way too unnecessary and frivolous for me to pass up, oh Fabio can't you see that!! Anyway, it is a pleasure to know you. I hope a free cart of food and cheese and DVDs and satin robes and super-long sofas comes crashing into your house today!! It will all be free and courtesy of a steep incline somewhere at a higher elevation. _why |
Unfortunately I didn't pursue this enough, I was actually planning on sending the interview questions to him, handwritten. :-) In retrospect, I wish I had, it would've been fun.
And that was Why, an icon for the Ruby community, an original character that can't be copied or replaced and we are very lucky for having here. Explore his material, learn his style, transmit his message of education, entertainment, friendliness, mastery and craftsmanship.