_why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius
Articles about _why on HN seem to always take on a particularly sycophantic quality.  As a non-fan of Ruby, his contributions to programming outside of that community seem minimal.  The ethic that people appear to ascribe to him ("programming as art") is precisely the opposite to that which I generally advocate ("programming as science"). I (and others) often suggest that the former approach is actually harmful to software quality in many cases, particularly within teams.<p>Fundamentally I think my objection is to elevating a slightly odd-ball programmer to messianic status based on a mildly creepy fandom that manifests primarily as people vastly over-stating the contributions of this one guy in HN comments.