the poignant guide never really was about Ruby. It was a wonderfully quirky book that happened to be using Ruby as its language
'A++' for effort though? It couldn't have been easy to draw all those cartoons.
_why was highly critical, even before he disappeared, of the "programmer mentality" that's incubated and fostered by sites like Hacker News itself. He was worried that something with such potential for fun, for creativity, for exploration, was being turned into something incredibly mechanized and efficient and even brutal. His "Poignant" Guide was just another way of exploring that.
Instead, I found a cryptic artsy graphic novel full of absurd humour, cultural references and so on. I found it hard to understand. It made me feel stupid and inferior (especially as English is not my native language). On the other hand, the community was full of praise for the book, so, I felt unwelcome and intimidated. The community seemed to be headed by elitist wizards, which were inventing their own culture, their own "secret language" and initiation rites. Almost a cult.
Anyway, I hadn't gave up on Ruby, I like it (and I think I mastered it quite well), I appreciate the beautiful ecosystem built around it, just don't take "idols and prophets" that serious anymore.
Not sure if the similar sentiment is shared by the GP though.
Ok, biting the troll bate and here we go :)...
1. Lack of focus on "just making (cool) stuff" (compare it with "Dive Into Python" and other Python or Perl tutorials) - it didn't feel "hacker/maker spirit" at all
2. Too many words, too little code - I think in code, pictures and occasionally equations: words are ok too, but not when their only purpose is making "opinionated" jokes. And the illustrations literally hurt my brain - I expect nicely crafted images that explain concepts, not weird jokes that have nothing to do with them!
3. Not many interesting concepts - I'm ok with not focusing on making "coll stuff" with a piece of technology you're just learning and with not being "hacker spirited", but if you don't do it this way, at least present interesting mind-opening concepts to the reader (just compare it with "Practical Common Lisp" or a Haskell tutorial - they give you so much tasty mindfood that the style doesn't even matter anymore, they could've been written in the style of a medical research article and still be enjoyable to read). Ruby didn't bring any interesting new concepts to me - it was Smalltalky OOP and the coolness of blocks that could've been just lambdas anyway...
4. Lots of stupid jokes that I didn't find funny at all, and made me feel stupid that maybe there was something I didn't understand but was supposed to, and cultural references that were very "WTF" (I'm European, but I've been pretty well exposed to US culture and I like "american style humor" but this felt like totally from a different planet).
5. This one is subjective don't mean to offend, just to be honest: I hate the whole gay (not necessarily in a sexual way), touchy, feely, friendly way of presenting technical things - I'm more of a "cold British humor", occasional "mildly offensive jokes" and a touch of "mental testosterone" kind of guy (this is the king of attitude that, for example, appeals to me in an aesthetic way: http://programming-motherfucker.com/ )
6. Despite being clear that learning resources like WPGR were opinionated and would only appear to people whose minds work in a certain way, they were recommended to all newbies. I like a culture that doesn't shove opinionated stuff in the face of new guys - first let them find "their own way", then show them the "opinionated ways".
7. There was a "split personality" thing that annoyed me: Ruby as a language appealed to the "hacker spirited" a lot, but the community was pulling in different direction that I couldn't really comprehend - a weird lust for a code-aesthetic-nirvana or something...
