It was very much of a time and place, and obviously people are welcome to take or leave it. I certainly cringe that every language now seems to need its own twee, jokey, book-long tutorial, like Learn You a Haskell for Great Good and Clojure for the Brave and True. But Why’s (Poignant) Guide captured the playfulness and nostalgia for lost time that the Ruby community evoked for a lot of people back then, especially those that had grown up with computers but drifted into enterprise software and watched the joy of technology slowly seep out of their lives. Whether it's a good way to learn Ruby the language, I don't really remember.