This Week’s Links: _why Edition

DevTools Can Do That?

Since the bad old days of alert messages like “Object Expected,” web debugging has become more sophisticated and powerful. These slides â€" from a Chrome Developer Tools presentation by Ilya Grigorik of Google â€" offer a nice overview of some of the latest goodies in Chrome DevTools. Pro tip: be sure to open chrome://flags and enable “Developer Tools experiments”; that way you can use some of the features, such as snippets, mentioned in the deck. And if you don’t yet know of the wonders of continuous paint mode, you are about to find out.

The Node.js Community Is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

Gregg Caines offers some thoughts on how Node.js development and use reflects a sea change in open source development in general. He notes the move from holistic platforms, such as Python’s “batteries included” philosophy, to the “core necessities” approach of Node.js, and the heavy lean on npm to get only what you need, and customize to your heart’s content. In contrast, Node is a monoculture on the back end, built heavily around Github. Caines notes that this makes it much easier to contribute because there’s no communication overhead: everything works the same. Contributed by Trevor Landau

_why

If you read only one of our links this week, make it this one. Why the Lucky Stiff is a pseudonymous hacker from the Ruby community, best known for writing what I consider to be the definitive intro to Ruby, Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby (warning: this is not like any programming guide you’ve ever seen, or will see). Why also wrote numerous code libraries.

Last year Why vanished from, well, everywhere. He took down his website and deleted all his code. He was gone, with almost no comment or explanation. Numerous Ruby fans rushed to create backups of his work, which is why you can visit the links above.

In January of this year, the site came back online, and this month it began displaying printer commands that, when pieced together, create a large document. The document, in true Why form, meanders through the background of what Why is thinking about and what was happening when he decided to erase his digital presence and vanish. And as noted in the linked story, Why’s site is back down again.

Also: chunky bacon.