Finally! My copy of Nobody Knows Shoes arrived in the mail this week. As an adoring fan of Why’s Poignant Guide I had perhaps unfairly high expectations of NKS. As can be seen in the downloadable PDF version it’s not as long nor as entertaining as the Guide, seems targeted at a slightly younger crowd and is decidedly less poignant. Unlike the Guide, the comic strips in NKS make no sense whatsoever and have abs(zero) relevance to the actual subject matter. There’s not even any mention of Chunky Bacon. But this is not to say that NKS is somehow inferior compared to WPG, more that I really had no business comparing the two in the first place. After all, Shoes is just a tiny toolkit by it’s own admission, designed with new programmers in mind. For those with a passing interest I recommend simply downloading the on-line PDF version (it is printed at cost anyway so you’ll just be saving _why the effort). But I would recommend it to any teacher-types with a class full of wanna-be programmers. Just hand them each a copy and let _why’s deranged cosmo-babble do the rest.