This is the legendary introduction to Ruby programming by _why the lucky stiff. Written between 2003 and 2009, it became one of the most beloved and unusual programming books ever made — part tutorial, part comic strip, part surrealist fiction. It has inspired a generation of programmers and a genre of creative technical writing that includes Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! and Learn You Some Erlang.
“This is just a small Ruby book. It won’t crush you. It’s light as a feather. And there’s a reason this book will stay light: because Ruby is simple to learn.”
On August 19th, 2009, _why the lucky stiff deleted his entire online presence in a single afternoon — every GitHub repo, every blog, every project. The programming community still calls it The Disappearance. This domain — the book’s original home — has been restored as a permanent historical preservation. All original content and illustrations are CC BY-SA 2.5.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1About This Book
- Chapter 2Kon’nichi wa, Ruby
- Chapter 3A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes)
- Chapter 4Floating Little Leaves of Code
- Chapter 5Them What Make the Rules and Them What Live the Dream
- Chapter 6Downtown Walrus & Upsetting a Salmon
- Chapter 7When You Wish Upon a Beard
- Expansion Pak IThe Tiger’s Vest (with a Basic Introduction to IRB)
- BonusDwemthy’s Array — The Ruby Mini-Dungeon Adventure
What This Book Is
Chapter three was reprinted in The Best Software Writing I, selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky (Apress, 2005). The guide has been cited by Martin Fowler, referenced in O’Reilly publications, and linked from thousands of programming courses, wikis, and tutorials. It is widely credited with making Ruby feel accessible and joyful to an entire generation of developers.
The book is illustrated throughout with comic strips featuring talking foxes, a large black cat named Trady Blix, and various other characters. The foxes are characters in a story that runs parallel to the Ruby tutorial. You do not need to understand the foxes to learn Ruby. But you will miss out on something if you skip them.
About _why the Lucky Stiff
_why (pronounced "why") was the pseudonym of a programmer and artist who was prolific in the Ruby community from roughly 2003 to 2009. In addition to this guide, he created Shoes (a Ruby GUI framework), Camping (a micro web framework, precursor to Sinatra’s approach), Hpricot (an HTML parser), and dozens of other tools and creative projects. His work was distinguished by its combination of technical depth with genuine whimsy and artistic sensibility.
On August 19th, 2009, he deleted everything. No explanation was given. The date is now observed annually as Whyday by the Ruby community — a day to build and release creative, experimental, slightly absurd projects in his spirit. whyday.org