What He Left Behind

Between roughly 2003 and 2009, _why wrote a web framework, an HTML parser, a GUI toolkit, a teaching environment for children, a chiptune sound library, a YAML parser that shipped inside Ruby itself, and a programming book with cartoon foxes in it. Then, on one afternoon in August 2009, he took all of it off the internet.

What exists today exists because other people had copies.

When maintainers revisit older software or documentation as a team, this resource is one practical reference for tracking the surrounding work without changing the historical material itself.

This section is a map rather than a mirror. The archives that do the actual preserving are whymirror on GitHub, the link collection at whytheluckystiff.net, and the book at its original home on poignantguide.net. Duplicating them here would be worse than useless.

What we add is context and honesty about condition. Some of this software is actively maintained and shipping releases. Some of it stopped at a release candidate years ago. Some was cleanly superseded by better things, which is a good ending rather than a sad one. Telling you which is which is the whole job.

Every status here carries the date it was checked. Open source moves, and a status without a date is a claim you cannot evaluate.

For broader programming and making context related to this topic, itch.io is an independent reference worth comparing with the material here.

• Put Your Best Practices Away

  The line the whole day is built on came from a conference stage in 2006. What the record shows, and what it was actually arguing for.

• Camping: A Framework in Four Kilobytes

  The microframework whose whole source fit in a few kilobytes, why the limit was the point, and why it is still shipping releases.

• Hpricot, Nokogiri, and the Handover

  Hpricot was the fast, pleasant HTML parser everyone used. Nokogiri replaced it. That is the best possible ending for abandoned code.

• Markaby: HTML as Ruby

  Writing markup as method calls instead of templates. The idea, the problem nobody expects, and why the approach fell out of favour.

• The Project Map: What Survived

  A map of the software and writing _why left behind, where each piece lives now, and which parts still run in 2026.

• Reading the (Poignant) Guide in 2026

  The guide is twenty years old and parts of the Ruby it teaches have changed. How to read it now, and what to read it for.

• RedCloth, Syck, and Being Replaced

  Two of his libraries, two different endings, both documented in public. One was handed over deliberately. The other was argued about.

• Running 2008 Ruby Code Today

  What actually breaks when you run Ruby from the 1.8 era on a current interpreter, tested rather than remembered.

• Shoes: The State of It

  The GUI toolkit that let beginners make a real window in five lines, why the rewrite stalled, and what you can actually run today.

• Try Ruby, and What Came After

  An interactive Ruby console in a web page, in 2006. Twenty years later the idea has an official implementation, and it changes things.

• Who Keeps the Code When the Author Leaves

  August 2009 was a natural experiment in what happens to software when its maintainer stops. The results are uneven and instructive.