10 ms·

TempleOS: 5 minute random code walkthrough

358 points by GuiA 12y ago

elwell 12y ago
Let's all hope Terry doesn't learn AI enough to equip TempleOS with the ability to learn (as well as networking). There's is no guessing as to what a randomized OS with a god-complex might do.
- narrator 12y ago
  Your future AI overlords will program in BrainF*ck http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_overlords_will_program_in_brainfck/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_...
Mithaldu 12y ago
These videos already make me inordinately happy, because everything about templeos is beautiful, and having it explained is so very nice. However the most beautiful take-away from these videos to me is that Terry has a bird. :)
- trentmb 12y ago
  His voice seems much calmer in this video. I hope that's an indication he's doing well.
cschep 12y ago
Whhhaaaaat the hell? Is this real?
- yincrash 12y ago
  TempleOS has been around for a bit! Definitely awesome.
- bithush 12y ago
  Yup. Terry Davis and his TempleOS are quite well known. I believe he suffers from schizophrenia although I do not know if this has been confirmed by anyone? He is certainly a gifted programmer.
  - comrh 12y ago
    His entire twitter is devoted to exposing the CIA's "conspiracies". https://twitter.com/TempleOS https://twitter.com/TempleOS
    - k__ 12y ago
      Is he this for sure? Sounds like a fundamentalist and racist to me :\
      - mjn 12y ago
        I believe it is. His old one had more technical content: https://twitter.com/losethos https://twitter.com/losethos
      - DanBC 12y ago
        If you have "showdead" set to "on" you can read his comments and they show some of the same racism and religiosity.
      - icelancer 12y ago
        I mean the guy is mentally ill. Is he really a "racist" if he's not in complete control of his faculties?
        Touche 12y ago
        I would say yes. The question is are the rest of us also racist but are just able to conceal it.
        tedks 12y ago
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Yes he used to post on HN quite a bit, most of his posts get down voted into oblivion however because few knew who he was and his mental illness makes for some abrasive comments.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    He still posts now and again, but whenever he makes new accounts they tend to get hellbanned fairly quickly so his audience here is mostly those of us with showdead on.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      There is a deeper message in that comment, "... his audience is those of us with showdead ..."
      - Lapsa 12y ago
        thank you for this. powerful message.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    I think his accounts got hellbanned, because he posted a large number of non-sensical comments. Objectively speaking, the comments were low-quality as published. To reach a larger audience, they would need some volunteers to separate and clean up the good ideas, and discard the nonsense.
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      > I think his accounts got hellbanned, because he posted a large number of non-sensical comments. A lot of his comments are "words direct from god" as determined by the random number generator in his OS.
    - thaumaturgy 12y ago
      > ...they would need some volunteers to separate and clean up the good ideas, and discard the nonsense. I wish this was a feature on HN actually. It'd be nice if some accounts had the ability to "un-dead" a comment, in the same way that some accounts can flag or unflag posts and comments now. I browse with showdead on and occasionally run across a comment from a submitter where the submitter was hellbanned for a specific incident but the comment itself is worthwhile.
andrewljohnson 12y ago
Random numbers coming from God is cute. I'm not a theist, but I also feel awe of the elusive concept of true randomness. I read something about this from him before, and it pops up in the 1st video. The flashing Menu button and marquee filename are interesting. A distraction to most people, but I wonder if they help the author Terry stay focused.
- goldfeld 12y ago
  Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right? Even in the sense that randomness is deterministic, it's then part of fate which is ruled by whatever supreme power you would believe in. As Luke says in The Dice Man, if "not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it", then how can a die tumble without his knowing it? A die is just as pseudo-random of course, but it's nigh impossible to have a "seed" of the exact hand movement and height you use, the surface and the form of the die. I'm an atheist, but I do find the concept of randomness being the pure will of god fascinating.
  - themodelplumber 12y ago
    > Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right? Interesting! Personally I don't know if the second part must follow from the first, at least not for * in theists. But then I'm a theist who doesn't believe in fate, or "God knowing about something == God giving a care" or God giving a care what you had for dinner. Even the beliefs I harbor about what you did have for dinner (i.e. treating your body in a specific way) have more to do with God wanting good things for man in general.
    - goldfeld 12y ago
      I realize I'm treading into waters of religion discussion here, but if you're a theist who refutes my statement you quoted, then you must dismiss the theory of chaos, does that follow? Since you said you don't believe in fate, I guess it does. Because if you think the theory of chaos true, that is, that everything is indeed deterministic in the sense that the world state now comes directly from the world state before, and we only think it is chaos because we can't control for all the absurd amount of variables, and if god knows everything, he sees the exact order in the chaos, and thus he knows that something as seemingly innocuous as a random number generator can have profound consequences sometimes--especially when it's used in softwares that altogether affect millions or billions of people every day. That is, pseudonumber generation in software does indeed affect a lot of people, and then if god isn't willing it, he has by the theory of chaos absolutely no control or grasp upon the world whatsoever in the end. The alternative is that you believe that god sometimes wills a random number, and most times doesn't. That would make me uncomfortable actually, but I guess that's why I don't believe in a supreme being having a will of its own, as opposed to us simply being governed by supreme principles or laws--I guess chaos is my god.
namecast 12y ago
Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond. If nothing else, TempleOS is a testament to how much one programmer can accomplish absent feedback or collaboration from others. For better or worse.
- gohrt 12y ago
  > Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond. This is clearly a statement of adoration, but even still, it is anti-helpful to perpetuate the use of the word "crazy" in conversations that touch on mental health.
  - vlunkr 12y ago
    Someone aught to tell Pink Floyd then
  - mkal_tsr 12y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_On_You_Crazy_Diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_On_You_Crazy_Diamond --- I noticed you wrote a 28.0 word per sentence comment, with an average of 4.7 characters per word. This parent comment may be difficult for someone under the age of 8 to understand, and we may have a child accidentally browse HN. Please remember to think of the children. Don't use words that have multiple meanings, this could cause confusion in their lives. Yours truly, Thought Police
  - arh68 12y ago
    Shine On is incredibly on-point here, since Syd Barrett himself went "crazy" to a degree and dropped out of the band. It's not a adoration of the person, it's an appreciation for Syd's inspiration or work. I'm not in Pink Floyd, but I very much like and appreciate the song.
    - mkal_tsr 12y ago
      It's more than that. This is an exact example of someone not understanding context, not using tools available to understand context, and then projecting their thoughts and beliefs onto someone else, all while completely avoidable. If you have the means to read the comment on the internet, you also have the means to search that phrase or set of words and immediately see it's connected to a Pink Floyd song. Even if you don't do the search, you're still projecting yourself onto their words. "Crazy diamond" ... what makes a diamond a 'typical' diamond? Sharp/precise, clear, focused. Now let's look at 'crazy' - typically means extremely far beyond the average/normal point. Literally 'off the charts' but in this context, mentally off the charts. To be in possession of such qualities so strong that we can't even think about how possible that is, but here we have something that demonstrates that. A person that wrote their own hobbyist kernel and OS. Is that easy to do? Show me your custom kernel & OS. Oh, don't have one? Then how many people do you personally know that have pretty much single handedly done that? Probably not that many. So you don't have a primary or secondary sources that you can speak to the dedication and depth of effort for this this task/accomplishment. It removes power from the one actually being discussed as to encourage others to speak on the individuals' behalf, thus less emphasis and power on their own self-representation and more importantly, their own voice. I think it is a perfect description: someone who is so clear and focused in their passion and pursuit of it to the extent that we can not comprehend the effort to achieve what he single handedly did, and the clear focused and beautiful nature of what they've created, straddling between pure effort and pure art. I think it's a very humanizing thing to show that mental illness is not inherently dangerous and not inherently bad and that those either showing signs or suffering are people first and foremost, and we should listen to what they have to say, not voices that claim to represent them.
LukeB_UK 12y ago
All the flashing bits and marquees... I never thought that someone could create an OS that reminds me of GeoCities
- oftenwrong 12y ago
  He uses <blink> tags on his site. The blinking might have some intended significance. Or maybe he just likes it.
Igglyboo 12y ago
This guy never ceases to amaze me, he's insanely smart and dedicated.
menriquez 12y ago
shine on you crazy diamond.
chippy 12y ago
I want to build in some kind of primitive networking into this OS - just so one machine can talk to another... it's on my side project list. Anyone had much experience with the code? Also - Love the positive comments in this thread. Proud of this community.
- X-Istence 12y ago
  The code is very interesting, I took a deep dive of it once with some colleagues and the JIT compiler is a thing of beauty...
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    He has a video on a demo mini JIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGLCCLPwDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGLCCLPwDI
- mrcsparker 12y ago
  If you do this, please document it. The environment looks great - I love how he navigates through the debugger.
- tedks 12y ago
  I think the maintainer has said that God forbids networking. This seemed irrational to everyone, and then the NSA scandal happened, so I'm inclined to side with Terry on this one.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Specifically, his belief is that God forbids networking in TempleOS, not other OS's. (Otherwise he wouldn't maintain a website, upload YouTube videos, or comment on HN.) It may not be a good idea to add networking to TempleOS, since he may take that as an affront to his religion. Also, if code has no license, then apparently it's equivalent to having an "All Rights Reserved" notice, preventing any re-use of the code at all, according to http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed-code-movement-or-madness/ http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed-cod... "Experienced developers won’t touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it." http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed-code-is-it-ever-ok/ http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed-cod... So if TempleOS has no license, then it may not be strictly legal to add networking support and then re-release the code. Glancing at the "Downloads" section shows no mention of a license. Of course, no one is going to be able to enforce those protections in Terry's case, but if it's likely to simultaneously offend him and be illegal, is it a good idea? What a strange situation. EDIT: TempleOS turns out to be in the public domain.
tlo 12y ago
Can somebody explain in a few words what TempleOS is?
- chippy 12y ago
  It's an operating system. http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ I run it in an VM.
- vlunkr 12y ago
  I second this.
- kazagistar 12y ago
  It is an operating system and associated infrastructure (editor, compiler, etc) written by one man who believes he is doing the word of god.
  - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    Must. Not. Make. RMS reference.
    - rblatz 12y ago
      RMS never actually made HERD. Terry actually has an OS.
      - gh02t 12y ago
        HURD is functional, it's just not really used by anything or anybody, so it's missing a lot of features. It's also to some degree rotting, last I checked it still was limited to i386. But HURD distros do exist in variants like Debian HURD, albeit maintained by skeleton crews. Point I am getting at is that it was made, it just was poorly timed. By the time it was semi-working, Linux was already entrenched. HURD couldn't collect momentum to really find a bigger niche.
        tedks 12y ago
microcolonel 12y ago
I had a conversation with Terry on freenode a couple years ago, back when TempleOS was "losethos". I was convinced, given the context, that losethos was just computer malware, and he had a hard time articulating why it wouldn't be, and ended up just getting frustrated at the most cursory of questions. A few days later, somebody who had witnessed the conversation informed me that he was a well known probable schizophrenic, and it really bummed me out that I didn't know or handle the situation better. While he hasn't convinced me of anything other than that having nice uniform names for types can be helpful(U64, S64, F64, etc.), that conversation gave me some perspective on what it means to be schizophrenic.
gojomo 12y ago
What if the giant computing platform battle of 2040 is TempleOS vs. Urbit, because everyone else got neurobricked by the iBrain/mindroid 0day of 2034?
- bshimmin 12y ago
  Is Urbit a joke? I've looked at its Github repo several times over the last year or so and still have no idea.
  - plaguuuuuu 12y ago
    just read the intro page if anything you could probably find some interesting people to talk to using the chat client. heh. on the other hand, I can make approximately zero sense of the source. or what I think might be the source.. for something... https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/zing/door.hook https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/... :: :::: /hoon/core/zing/pro :: /? 314 /- zing |_ zig=zing :: ++ grab :: convert from |% ++ noun :: convert from %noun |= src=* ^+ +>+ +>+(zig (zing src)) -- --
    - jcburnham 12y ago
      ...clearly that's a content type validator. A zing is actually just a chat message. Take a look at the zing type definition in https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/zing/gate.hook https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/... $% [%hola p=path] $: %mess p=path $= q $% [%do p=@t] [%exp p=@t q=tank] [%say p=@t] == == == Which (ignoring the crazy syntax) is either an initialization (an %hola), an action (a %do, like /me in IRC), an embeded Hoon expression (an %exp, which is a [code output] pair), or a message (a %say). @t is just a string type. sur/zing/gate/hook defines the type, mar/zing/core/hoon uses sur/zing/gate/hook to validate untyped data received over the network.
      - 12y ago
ivans__ 12y ago
Terry is always a huge inspiration to me!
M4v3R 12y ago
It makes me sad that even with his illness he delivered more working code than I probably will ever do. Maybe not because I can't, but because I procastinate so much and I really have hard time focusing on doing work.
- ibebrett 12y ago
  Thats really the definition of "cant"
  - neurobro 12y ago
    Do you mean 1: affected singsong or whining speech. or 2: the private language of the underworld?
- staticshock 12y ago
  Work is hard, and staying on task in the face of digital distractions is harder still, but you can do it. My philosophy is that in order to battle distractions, you need a more structured environment. Sure, some can manage without, but I think those people are probably outliers. Most of us are click-happy, trivia collecting pseudo-information junkies. In school, that structure was created by classes, tests, assignments, due dates, etc. Those may seem like external factors, and yet they can be traced back to you: at some point you probably chose your course load and schedule, you likely chose your degree, and even the act of attending a college in the first place was, arguably, a choice. College was a maze of your own creation, and you were the mouse running through it. After academia, though, that structure disappears. If you want it back, you have to go back to playing the roles of two different people: the visionary CEO of your life, who sets the broad agenda, milestones and deadlines, and the engineer who implements that vision. Concretely, that means you need to break down big tasks into smaller ones, and deciding that those smaller tasks need to be done in a concrete amount of time, such as "today", "this week", or "this month". Make a calendar, put it up on a wall, make it visible. The structure dissolves if you ignore it, so make it hard to ignore it. Oh, and invest in some of that "grit" everyone seems to be talking about: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-control-a-marshmallow-test-for-the-digital-age/ http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-contr...
Davesjoshin 12y ago
How come his rants have a lot of racial slurs? Am I missing something? http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Rant140922.html http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Ra...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Crito 12y ago
  My understanding is that he is mentally ill. I wouldn't read too much into that kind of stuff. His technical chops are impressive. If you can filter out the racism/RNG-God stuff then he frequently has something interesting (although not always on-topic) to say.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    >My understanding is that he is mentally ill. That was my take on him too. He used to go on OSNews and rant about how God wants him to remove the "jitter" from modern operating systems, which is why he created TempleOS. He hasn't been on there in quite a while though. As for his racism, I've seen that kind of thing as a side effect of schizophrenia in other people. Certainly, there are true racists in the world who aren't schizophrenic, but as with other mental disorders, it can bring out that kind of antisocial behavior. *Edit: If I recall correctly, his username on OSNews was "ParadoxUncreated".
  - Davesjoshin 12y ago
    Thanks, I did not know that until now. Yes his technical know how is very impressive.
- DanBC 12y ago
  i) perhaps he's a massive racist ii) perhaps he has an illness that affects inhibition It's a bit rude to just gossip about someone, especially when he reads (and posts to) HN. I always feel vaguely uncomfortable when this topic is discussed on HN.
deleted 12y ago
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incision 12y ago
Neat, subscribed. I make a point to read TempleOS' comments. Looking past the frequent nastiness they're sometimes interesting and even poetic, in a way that's as sadly familiar as the intonation in these videos.
- corin_ 12y ago
  Ditto - he's the reason I keep showdead on.
cmdrfred 12y ago
What if he's right?
- sitkack 12y ago
  That God is a hypervisor? Or that religion is paravirtualization? I do know that we should be using some Ocaml/Lisp hybrid with hardware transactional memory support.
  - cmdrfred 12y ago
    Its the matrix, and Terry Davis is Neo.
- GunlogAlm 12y ago
  Right about what, specifically?
qznc 12y ago
I like the idea for quick impromptu presentations, so a made a script for git: https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git-randomline https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git-randomline $ vi $(git randomline) Then explain to someone in five minutes
MarkPNeyer 12y ago
i've been through a lot of psychosis and feel like i can understand this guy. i had a psychotic break in late 2012 and thought strongly that catholicism was created to teach the world computer science concepts. when you start reading about roko's basilisk, it's not a stretch at all to imagine that primitive human beings exposed to an artificial intelligence would think of it like 'god'.
no_future 12y ago
Terry is a goddamn hero and an inspiration to us all
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  Here here.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    This is neither here nor there, but it's “Hear, hear”.
    - cmdrfred 12y ago
      I stand corrected.
sitkack 12y ago
The world is definitely better off with Terry. Thanks man and keep on doing your thing.
deleted 12y ago
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callahad 12y ago
I love the idea of a built-in hotkey for jumping to a random line across the entire codebase. Like a fuzzer, but for your understanding of your project. ...and now I really want to write a vimscript to do the same.
- lost-theory 12y ago
  Here's a python one-liner that will do it: import os; import random; os.system("vim %s +%s" % (lambda f: (f, random.randint(1,len(open(f).readlines())+1)))(random.choice([f for f in sum([[os.path.join(p, f) for f in fs] for (p, ds, fs) in os.walk(".")], []) if not ".git" in f])))
  - dradtke 12y ago
    That's one hell of a one-liner.
    - archgoon 12y ago
      Old math joke: "It's a one line proof; if you start far enough to the left."
    - e12e 12y ago
      It's a great example of the trade-offs made in python (as opposed to, say, perl) design: It's not really a one-liner (yeah, it fits on one line, but it just cries out to be re-formatted) -- it's too verbose -- but the flip side is that it's actually rather readable.
      - vegggdor 12y ago
        Having to use lambdas just to get the syntax to allow for a one liner makes your point about reformatting.
thaumaturgy 12y ago
Does anyone have the code for the PRNG handy, or is familiar with it? It'd be kinda neat to see how that bit works.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  It is, after all, the mind of god, which would be interesting to understand.
codezero 12y ago
I actually like the idea of having to pick a random routine in a large codebase and then explaining it on the fly. Terry does a pretty good job at this, he's done similar things in other videos.
smegel 12y ago
If nothing else, this guy's got staying power.
cmdrfred 12y ago
I hope medical science can one day find a way to help our friends like Terry find their way home. Until then all we can do is let him know that he is loved and respected by his peers, Terry you are one of us.
- wetmore 12y ago
  I'm sure his hellban here is really helping demonstrate that...
  - cmdrfred 12y ago
    I think thats probably more to protect Terry from some of us then it is to protect us from Terry. Example(I'd beat everyones ass in this thread): http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434374&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...
    - JimmyM 12y ago
      How horrible. A classic example of the fact that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence - whether verbal or physical.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  > I hope medical science can one day find a way to help our friends like Terry find their way home. But from Terry's point of view, you're hoping that medical science can separate God from him.
curiousDog 12y ago
As much as I appreciate what he did (most of us wrote a bare bones OS in school anyway), I'm not a fan of his racist comments. Some are incredibly specific like "I can't believe a nigger is the boss of a white guy, that just isn't right" or something like that. It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them because of his illness. Nonetheless, my bad to rain on someone with such an illness. All the best to him.
- nmjohn 12y ago
  > It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them It is not at all like he simply can't control them & would have the thoughts regardless. That's not really how the disease works. I'm not saying you need to be a fan of his comments - but I do think he deserves a little more slack than you're giving him.
- omegaham 12y ago
  I think that everyone has these thoughts regardless of their efforts to be "pure of heart" or whatever. I know that I've yelled some really, really nasty things while driving that I'm ashamed to recall. Terry's illness doesn't make him a bad person, and I think that all of us would be humbled and ashamed if our inner monologues' nastiest comments were broadcast to the world.
- GunlogAlm 12y ago
  You don't have to like them -- I don't either -- but the poor man clearly suffers from mental issues. He can't help what he says, and I think people ought to be more understanding.
broken 12y ago
"showdead -> yes" is the only reason i have a HN account.
- tedks 12y ago
  Off topic: lately, I've noticed a lot of dead HN comments and entire shadowbanned accounts that seem totally reasonable and on-topic. I really wish there was a way to flag dead comments that were auto-flagged as false positives, because in the past HN mods have said people who comment from IPs that were previously banned also get shadowbanned.
  - enneff 12y ago
    Next time, take a look into their comment history. A lot of hellbanned people are totally reasonable on some topics but have pet topics about which they can be incredibly obnoxious.
userbinator 12y ago
What makes this amazing is that Linus Torvalds probably wouldn't be able to pick a random piece of code in the Linux kernel and do this. The fact that it's quite featureful for an OS of ~100kLOC - including an assembler and compiler for a language with some OOP - makes this even more interesting. "The shell is a compiler/interpreter" concept somewhat reminds me of Lisp machines too.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  I'd wager that there's 138k lines of code for which Linus could drop into the code and figure out what's going on in a couple of minutes, in the same way as this; at least he could in the past. I've watched realtime conversations on IRC and in other realtime environments where he exhibits exactly this kind of comprehension of huge swaths of Linux. Linux just happens to be vastly larger than this now. Not to dismiss this guy's impressive grasp of his chosen language and the things he's built in it; watching him using so many tools that seem to be of his own devising is impressive as hell. Downright intimidating, in fact. My lifetime software output becomes practically zero in comparison.
desireco42 12y ago
After looking at some of videos and intro, he is onto something with this. You can always run this in vm, I can see how permissions and ownership can get in a way. By using subroutines, he gets every ounce of juice out of his machine. Also document format, based on his description, sounds awesome.
axaxs 12y ago
I'd just be happy for a usable Holy C. Growing up in the south, I can perhaps sadly deal with the political or racist rants. Putting that aside, I think the man is a genius who has much to offer the world. I'd love for someone like this to mentor me, though such a thing is hard to find outside academia.
orbifold 12y ago
One concept I really like is to just identity map the whole address space and run everything with full priviledges. With a sufficiently high level memory safe language with good concurrency and memory regions support, you should be able to statically enforce most of the guarantees that the hardware provides and at the same time get rid of context switches. Untrusted code in a memory unsafe language would simply run in a VM.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  This is how the Xerox PARC OSes and Oberon OSes families work, among a few others.
  - smorrow 12y ago
    Inferno.
donatj 12y ago
A little over a year ago I wrote a post about the problems I saw in Coffeescript, Terry commented that switching to TempleOS would prevent my complaints as I could use his C variant. Made my day to have him comment.
squidmccactus 12y ago
Which operating system is this?
josteink 12y ago
Direct youtube links for those (like me) for whatever reason were unable to watch the videos directly in the page: 5-Minute Random Code Walk-Thru Episode #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8 Episode #2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g Episode #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo Episode #4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs Episode #5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g Episode #6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8 Episode #7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ Episode #8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw Episode #9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo Episode #10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM Episode #11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco Episode #12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY Episode #13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0

358 points by GuiA 12y ago

Let's all hope Terry doesn't learn AI enough to equip TempleOS with the ability to learn (as well as networking). There's is no guessing as to what a randomized OS with a god-complex might do.

narrator 12y ago
Your future AI overlords will program in BrainF*ck http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_overlords_will_program_in_brainfck/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17fe6q/your_ai_...

Mithaldu 12y ago

These videos already make me inordinately happy, because everything about templeos is beautiful, and having it explained is so very nice. However the most beautiful take-away from these videos to me is that Terry has a bird. :)

trentmb 12y ago
His voice seems much calmer in this video. I hope that's an indication he's doing well.

cschep 12y ago

Whhhaaaaat the hell? Is this real?

yincrash 12y ago
TempleOS has been around for a bit! Definitely awesome.
bithush 12y ago
Yup. Terry Davis and his TempleOS are quite well known. I believe he suffers from schizophrenia although I do not know if this has been confirmed by anyone? He is certainly a gifted programmer.
- comrh 12y ago
  His entire twitter is devoted to exposing the CIA's "conspiracies". https://twitter.com/TempleOS https://twitter.com/TempleOS
  - k__ 12y ago
    Is he this for sure? Sounds like a fundamentalist and racist to me :\
    - mjn 12y ago
      I believe it is. His old one had more technical content: https://twitter.com/losethos https://twitter.com/losethos
    - DanBC 12y ago
      If you have "showdead" set to "on" you can read his comments and they show some of the same racism and religiosity.
    - icelancer 12y ago
      I mean the guy is mentally ill. Is he really a "racist" if he's not in complete control of his faculties?
      - Touche 12y ago
        I would say yes. The question is are the rest of us also racist but are just able to conceal it.
        tedks 12y ago
Igglyboo 12y ago
Yes he used to post on HN quite a bit, most of his posts get down voted into oblivion however because few knew who he was and his mental illness makes for some abrasive comments.
- vidarh 12y ago
  He still posts now and again, but whenever he makes new accounts they tend to get hellbanned fairly quickly so his audience here is mostly those of us with showdead on.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    There is a deeper message in that comment, "... his audience is those of us with showdead ..."
    - Lapsa 12y ago
      thank you for this. powerful message.
- gohrt 12y ago
  I think his accounts got hellbanned, because he posted a large number of non-sensical comments. Objectively speaking, the comments were low-quality as published. To reach a larger audience, they would need some volunteers to separate and clean up the good ideas, and discard the nonsense.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    > I think his accounts got hellbanned, because he posted a large number of non-sensical comments. A lot of his comments are "words direct from god" as determined by the random number generator in his OS.
  - thaumaturgy 12y ago
    > ...they would need some volunteers to separate and clean up the good ideas, and discard the nonsense. I wish this was a feature on HN actually. It'd be nice if some accounts had the ability to "un-dead" a comment, in the same way that some accounts can flag or unflag posts and comments now. I browse with showdead on and occasionally run across a comment from a submitter where the submitter was hellbanned for a specific incident but the comment itself is worthwhile.

andrewljohnson 12y ago

Random numbers coming from God is cute. I'm not a theist, but I also feel awe of the elusive concept of true randomness. I read something about this from him before, and it pops up in the 1st video. The flashing Menu button and marquee filename are interesting. A distraction to most people, but I wonder if they help the author Terry stay focused.

goldfeld 12y ago
Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right? Even in the sense that randomness is deterministic, it's then part of fate which is ruled by whatever supreme power you would believe in. As Luke says in The Dice Man, if "not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it", then how can a die tumble without his knowing it? A die is just as pseudo-random of course, but it's nigh impossible to have a "seed" of the exact hand movement and height you use, the surface and the form of the die. I'm an atheist, but I do find the concept of randomness being the pure will of god fascinating.
- themodelplumber 12y ago
  > Well, if you believe in god, then random numbers must come from him, right? Interesting! Personally I don't know if the second part must follow from the first, at least not for * in theists. But then I'm a theist who doesn't believe in fate, or "God knowing about something == God giving a care" or God giving a care what you had for dinner. Even the beliefs I harbor about what you did have for dinner (i.e. treating your body in a specific way) have more to do with God wanting good things for man in general.
  - goldfeld 12y ago
    I realize I'm treading into waters of religion discussion here, but if you're a theist who refutes my statement you quoted, then you must dismiss the theory of chaos, does that follow? Since you said you don't believe in fate, I guess it does. Because if you think the theory of chaos true, that is, that everything is indeed deterministic in the sense that the world state now comes directly from the world state before, and we only think it is chaos because we can't control for all the absurd amount of variables, and if god knows everything, he sees the exact order in the chaos, and thus he knows that something as seemingly innocuous as a random number generator can have profound consequences sometimes--especially when it's used in softwares that altogether affect millions or billions of people every day. That is, pseudonumber generation in software does indeed affect a lot of people, and then if god isn't willing it, he has by the theory of chaos absolutely no control or grasp upon the world whatsoever in the end. The alternative is that you believe that god sometimes wills a random number, and most times doesn't. That would make me uncomfortable actually, but I guess that's why I don't believe in a supreme being having a will of its own, as opposed to us simply being governed by supreme principles or laws--I guess chaos is my god.

namecast 12y ago

Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond. If nothing else, TempleOS is a testament to how much one programmer can accomplish absent feedback or collaboration from others. For better or worse.

gohrt 12y ago
> Shine on, Terry, you crazy diamond. This is clearly a statement of adoration, but even still, it is anti-helpful to perpetuate the use of the word "crazy" in conversations that touch on mental health.
- vlunkr 12y ago
  Someone aught to tell Pink Floyd then
- mkal_tsr 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_On_You_Crazy_Diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shine_On_You_Crazy_Diamond --- I noticed you wrote a 28.0 word per sentence comment, with an average of 4.7 characters per word. This parent comment may be difficult for someone under the age of 8 to understand, and we may have a child accidentally browse HN. Please remember to think of the children. Don't use words that have multiple meanings, this could cause confusion in their lives. Yours truly, Thought Police
- arh68 12y ago
  Shine On is incredibly on-point here, since Syd Barrett himself went "crazy" to a degree and dropped out of the band. It's not a adoration of the person, it's an appreciation for Syd's inspiration or work. I'm not in Pink Floyd, but I very much like and appreciate the song.
  - mkal_tsr 12y ago
    It's more than that. This is an exact example of someone not understanding context, not using tools available to understand context, and then projecting their thoughts and beliefs onto someone else, all while completely avoidable. If you have the means to read the comment on the internet, you also have the means to search that phrase or set of words and immediately see it's connected to a Pink Floyd song. Even if you don't do the search, you're still projecting yourself onto their words. "Crazy diamond" ... what makes a diamond a 'typical' diamond? Sharp/precise, clear, focused. Now let's look at 'crazy' - typically means extremely far beyond the average/normal point. Literally 'off the charts' but in this context, mentally off the charts. To be in possession of such qualities so strong that we can't even think about how possible that is, but here we have something that demonstrates that. A person that wrote their own hobbyist kernel and OS. Is that easy to do? Show me your custom kernel & OS. Oh, don't have one? Then how many people do you personally know that have pretty much single handedly done that? Probably not that many. So you don't have a primary or secondary sources that you can speak to the dedication and depth of effort for this this task/accomplishment. It removes power from the one actually being discussed as to encourage others to speak on the individuals' behalf, thus less emphasis and power on their own self-representation and more importantly, their own voice. I think it is a perfect description: someone who is so clear and focused in their passion and pursuit of it to the extent that we can not comprehend the effort to achieve what he single handedly did, and the clear focused and beautiful nature of what they've created, straddling between pure effort and pure art. I think it's a very humanizing thing to show that mental illness is not inherently dangerous and not inherently bad and that those either showing signs or suffering are people first and foremost, and we should listen to what they have to say, not voices that claim to represent them.

LukeB_UK 12y ago

All the flashing bits and marquees... I never thought that someone could create an OS that reminds me of GeoCities

oftenwrong 12y ago
He uses <blink> tags on his site. The blinking might have some intended significance. Or maybe he just likes it.

Igglyboo 12y ago

This guy never ceases to amaze me, he's insanely smart and dedicated.

menriquez 12y ago

shine on you crazy diamond.

chippy 12y ago

I want to build in some kind of primitive networking into this OS - just so one machine can talk to another... it's on my side project list. Anyone had much experience with the code? Also - Love the positive comments in this thread. Proud of this community.

X-Istence 12y ago
The code is very interesting, I took a deep dive of it once with some colleagues and the JIT compiler is a thing of beauty...
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  He has a video on a demo mini JIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGLCCLPwDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGLCCLPwDI
mrcsparker 12y ago
If you do this, please document it. The environment looks great - I love how he navigates through the debugger.
tedks 12y ago
I think the maintainer has said that God forbids networking. This seemed irrational to everyone, and then the NSA scandal happened, so I'm inclined to side with Terry on this one.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Specifically, his belief is that God forbids networking in TempleOS, not other OS's. (Otherwise he wouldn't maintain a website, upload YouTube videos, or comment on HN.) It may not be a good idea to add networking to TempleOS, since he may take that as an affront to his religion. Also, if code has no license, then apparently it's equivalent to having an "All Rights Reserved" notice, preventing any re-use of the code at all, according to http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed-code-movement-or-madness/ http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/21/unlicensed-cod... "Experienced developers won’t touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it." http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed-code-is-it-ever-ok/ http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2013/05/23/unlicensed-cod... So if TempleOS has no license, then it may not be strictly legal to add networking support and then re-release the code. Glancing at the "Downloads" section shows no mention of a license. Of course, no one is going to be able to enforce those protections in Terry's case, but if it's likely to simultaneously offend him and be illegal, is it a good idea? What a strange situation. EDIT: TempleOS turns out to be in the public domain.

tlo 12y ago

Can somebody explain in a few words what TempleOS is?

chippy 12y ago
It's an operating system. http://www.templeos.org/ http://www.templeos.org/ I run it in an VM.
vlunkr 12y ago
I second this.
kazagistar 12y ago
It is an operating system and associated infrastructure (editor, compiler, etc) written by one man who believes he is doing the word of god.
- MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  Must. Not. Make. RMS reference.
  - rblatz 12y ago
    RMS never actually made HERD. Terry actually has an OS.
    - gh02t 12y ago
      HURD is functional, it's just not really used by anything or anybody, so it's missing a lot of features. It's also to some degree rotting, last I checked it still was limited to i386. But HURD distros do exist in variants like Debian HURD, albeit maintained by skeleton crews. Point I am getting at is that it was made, it just was poorly timed. By the time it was semi-working, Linux was already entrenched. HURD couldn't collect momentum to really find a bigger niche.
      - tedks 12y ago

microcolonel 12y ago

I had a conversation with Terry on freenode a couple years ago, back when TempleOS was "losethos". I was convinced, given the context, that losethos was just computer malware, and he had a hard time articulating why it wouldn't be, and ended up just getting frustrated at the most cursory of questions. A few days later, somebody who had witnessed the conversation informed me that he was a well known probable schizophrenic, and it really bummed me out that I didn't know or handle the situation better. While he hasn't convinced me of anything other than that having nice uniform names for types can be helpful(U64, S64, F64, etc.), that conversation gave me some perspective on what it means to be schizophrenic.

gojomo 12y ago

What if the giant computing platform battle of 2040 is TempleOS vs. Urbit, because everyone else got neurobricked by the iBrain/mindroid 0day of 2034?

bshimmin 12y ago
Is Urbit a joke? I've looked at its Github repo several times over the last year or so and still have no idea.
- plaguuuuuu 12y ago
  just read the intro page if anything you could probably find some interesting people to talk to using the chat client. heh. on the other hand, I can make approximately zero sense of the source. or what I think might be the source.. for something... https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/zing/door.hook https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/mar/... :: :::: /hoon/core/zing/pro :: /? 314 /- zing |_ zig=zing :: ++ grab :: convert from |% ++ noun :: convert from %noun |= src=* ^+ +>+ +>+(zig (zing src)) -- --
  - jcburnham 12y ago
    ...clearly that's a content type validator. A zing is actually just a chat message. Take a look at the zing type definition in https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/zing/gate.hook https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/sur/... $% [%hola p=path] $: %mess p=path $= q $% [%do p=@t] [%exp p=@t q=tank] [%say p=@t] == == == Which (ignoring the crazy syntax) is either an initialization (an %hola), an action (a %do, like /me in IRC), an embeded Hoon expression (an %exp, which is a [code output] pair), or a message (a %say). @t is just a string type. sur/zing/gate/hook defines the type, mar/zing/core/hoon uses sur/zing/gate/hook to validate untyped data received over the network.
    - 12y ago

ivans__ 12y ago

Terry is always a huge inspiration to me!

M4v3R 12y ago

It makes me sad that even with his illness he delivered more working code than I probably will ever do. Maybe not because I can't, but because I procastinate so much and I really have hard time focusing on doing work.

ibebrett 12y ago
Thats really the definition of "cant"
- neurobro 12y ago
  Do you mean 1: affected singsong or whining speech. or 2: the private language of the underworld?
staticshock 12y ago
Work is hard, and staying on task in the face of digital distractions is harder still, but you can do it. My philosophy is that in order to battle distractions, you need a more structured environment. Sure, some can manage without, but I think those people are probably outliers. Most of us are click-happy, trivia collecting pseudo-information junkies. In school, that structure was created by classes, tests, assignments, due dates, etc. Those may seem like external factors, and yet they can be traced back to you: at some point you probably chose your course load and schedule, you likely chose your degree, and even the act of attending a college in the first place was, arguably, a choice. College was a maze of your own creation, and you were the mouse running through it. After academia, though, that structure disappears. If you want it back, you have to go back to playing the roles of two different people: the visionary CEO of your life, who sets the broad agenda, milestones and deadlines, and the engineer who implements that vision. Concretely, that means you need to break down big tasks into smaller ones, and deciding that those smaller tasks need to be done in a concrete amount of time, such as "today", "this week", or "this month". Make a calendar, put it up on a wall, make it visible. The structure dissolves if you ignore it, so make it hard to ignore it. Oh, and invest in some of that "grit" everyone seems to be talking about: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-control-a-marshmallow-test-for-the-digital-age/ http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/measuring-self-contr...

Davesjoshin 12y ago

How come his rants have a lot of racial slurs? Am I missing something? http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Rant140922.html http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/2014/09/Ra...

deleted 12y ago
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Crito 12y ago
My understanding is that he is mentally ill. I wouldn't read too much into that kind of stuff. His technical chops are impressive. If you can filter out the racism/RNG-God stuff then he frequently has something interesting (although not always on-topic) to say.
- morganvachon 12y ago
  >My understanding is that he is mentally ill. That was my take on him too. He used to go on OSNews and rant about how God wants him to remove the "jitter" from modern operating systems, which is why he created TempleOS. He hasn't been on there in quite a while though. As for his racism, I've seen that kind of thing as a side effect of schizophrenia in other people. Certainly, there are true racists in the world who aren't schizophrenic, but as with other mental disorders, it can bring out that kind of antisocial behavior. *Edit: If I recall correctly, his username on OSNews was "ParadoxUncreated".
- Davesjoshin 12y ago
  Thanks, I did not know that until now. Yes his technical know how is very impressive.
DanBC 12y ago
i) perhaps he's a massive racist ii) perhaps he has an illness that affects inhibition It's a bit rude to just gossip about someone, especially when he reads (and posts to) HN. I always feel vaguely uncomfortable when this topic is discussed on HN.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

incision 12y ago

Neat, subscribed. I make a point to read TempleOS' comments. Looking past the frequent nastiness they're sometimes interesting and even poetic, in a way that's as sadly familiar as the intonation in these videos.

corin_ 12y ago
Ditto - he's the reason I keep showdead on.

cmdrfred 12y ago

What if he's right?

sitkack 12y ago
That God is a hypervisor? Or that religion is paravirtualization? I do know that we should be using some Ocaml/Lisp hybrid with hardware transactional memory support.
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  Its the matrix, and Terry Davis is Neo.
GunlogAlm 12y ago
Right about what, specifically?

qznc 12y ago

I like the idea for quick impromptu presentations, so a made a script for git: https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git-randomline https://github.com/qznc/dot/blob/master/bin/git-randomline $ vi $(git randomline) Then explain to someone in five minutes

MarkPNeyer 12y ago

i've been through a lot of psychosis and feel like i can understand this guy. i had a psychotic break in late 2012 and thought strongly that catholicism was created to teach the world computer science concepts. when you start reading about roko's basilisk, it's not a stretch at all to imagine that primitive human beings exposed to an artificial intelligence would think of it like 'god'.

no_future 12y ago

Terry is a goddamn hero and an inspiration to us all

cmdrfred 12y ago
Here here.
- teddyh 12y ago
  This is neither here nor there, but it's “Hear, hear”.
  - cmdrfred 12y ago
    I stand corrected.

sitkack 12y ago

The world is definitely better off with Terry. Thanks man and keep on doing your thing.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

callahad 12y ago

I love the idea of a built-in hotkey for jumping to a random line across the entire codebase. Like a fuzzer, but for your understanding of your project. ...and now I really want to write a vimscript to do the same.

lost-theory 12y ago
Here's a python one-liner that will do it: import os; import random; os.system("vim %s +%s" % (lambda f: (f, random.randint(1,len(open(f).readlines())+1)))(random.choice([f for f in sum([[os.path.join(p, f) for f in fs] for (p, ds, fs) in os.walk(".")], []) if not ".git" in f])))
- dradtke 12y ago
  That's one hell of a one-liner.
  - archgoon 12y ago
    Old math joke: "It's a one line proof; if you start far enough to the left."
  - e12e 12y ago
    It's a great example of the trade-offs made in python (as opposed to, say, perl) design: It's not really a one-liner (yeah, it fits on one line, but it just cries out to be re-formatted) -- it's too verbose -- but the flip side is that it's actually rather readable.
    - vegggdor 12y ago
      Having to use lambdas just to get the syntax to allow for a one liner makes your point about reformatting.

thaumaturgy 12y ago

Does anyone have the code for the PRNG handy, or is familiar with it? It'd be kinda neat to see how that bit works.

SwellJoe 12y ago
It is, after all, the mind of god, which would be interesting to understand.

codezero 12y ago

I actually like the idea of having to pick a random routine in a large codebase and then explaining it on the fly. Terry does a pretty good job at this, he's done similar things in other videos.

smegel 12y ago

If nothing else, this guy's got staying power.

cmdrfred 12y ago

I hope medical science can one day find a way to help our friends like Terry find their way home. Until then all we can do is let him know that he is loved and respected by his peers, Terry you are one of us.

wetmore 12y ago
I'm sure his hellban here is really helping demonstrate that...
- cmdrfred 12y ago
  I think thats probably more to protect Terry from some of us then it is to protect us from Terry. Example(I'd beat everyones ass in this thread): http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434374&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...
  - JimmyM 12y ago
    How horrible. A classic example of the fact that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence - whether verbal or physical.
pavel_lishin 12y ago
> I hope medical science can one day find a way to help our friends like Terry find their way home. But from Terry's point of view, you're hoping that medical science can separate God from him.

curiousDog 12y ago

As much as I appreciate what he did (most of us wrote a bare bones OS in school anyway), I'm not a fan of his racist comments. Some are incredibly specific like "I can't believe a nigger is the boss of a white guy, that just isn't right" or something like that. It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them because of his illness. Nonetheless, my bad to rain on someone with such an illness. All the best to him.

nmjohn 12y ago
> It's like he has these thoughts actually bottled up but cannot control them It is not at all like he simply can't control them & would have the thoughts regardless. That's not really how the disease works. I'm not saying you need to be a fan of his comments - but I do think he deserves a little more slack than you're giving him.
omegaham 12y ago
I think that everyone has these thoughts regardless of their efforts to be "pure of heart" or whatever. I know that I've yelled some really, really nasty things while driving that I'm ashamed to recall. Terry's illness doesn't make him a bad person, and I think that all of us would be humbled and ashamed if our inner monologues' nastiest comments were broadcast to the world.
GunlogAlm 12y ago
You don't have to like them -- I don't either -- but the poor man clearly suffers from mental issues. He can't help what he says, and I think people ought to be more understanding.

broken 12y ago

"showdead -> yes" is the only reason i have a HN account.

tedks 12y ago
Off topic: lately, I've noticed a lot of dead HN comments and entire shadowbanned accounts that seem totally reasonable and on-topic. I really wish there was a way to flag dead comments that were auto-flagged as false positives, because in the past HN mods have said people who comment from IPs that were previously banned also get shadowbanned.
- enneff 12y ago
  Next time, take a look into their comment history. A lot of hellbanned people are totally reasonable on some topics but have pet topics about which they can be incredibly obnoxious.

userbinator 12y ago

What makes this amazing is that Linus Torvalds probably wouldn't be able to pick a random piece of code in the Linux kernel and do this. The fact that it's quite featureful for an OS of ~100kLOC - including an assembler and compiler for a language with some OOP - makes this even more interesting. "The shell is a compiler/interpreter" concept somewhat reminds me of Lisp machines too.

SwellJoe 12y ago
I'd wager that there's 138k lines of code for which Linus could drop into the code and figure out what's going on in a couple of minutes, in the same way as this; at least he could in the past. I've watched realtime conversations on IRC and in other realtime environments where he exhibits exactly this kind of comprehension of huge swaths of Linux. Linux just happens to be vastly larger than this now. Not to dismiss this guy's impressive grasp of his chosen language and the things he's built in it; watching him using so many tools that seem to be of his own devising is impressive as hell. Downright intimidating, in fact. My lifetime software output becomes practically zero in comparison.

desireco42 12y ago

After looking at some of videos and intro, he is onto something with this. You can always run this in vm, I can see how permissions and ownership can get in a way. By using subroutines, he gets every ounce of juice out of his machine. Also document format, based on his description, sounds awesome.

axaxs 12y ago

I'd just be happy for a usable Holy C. Growing up in the south, I can perhaps sadly deal with the political or racist rants. Putting that aside, I think the man is a genius who has much to offer the world. I'd love for someone like this to mentor me, though such a thing is hard to find outside academia.

orbifold 12y ago

One concept I really like is to just identity map the whole address space and run everything with full priviledges. With a sufficiently high level memory safe language with good concurrency and memory regions support, you should be able to statically enforce most of the guarantees that the hardware provides and at the same time get rid of context switches. Untrusted code in a memory unsafe language would simply run in a VM.

pjmlp 12y ago
This is how the Xerox PARC OSes and Oberon OSes families work, among a few others.
- smorrow 12y ago
  Inferno.

donatj 12y ago

A little over a year ago I wrote a post about the problems I saw in Coffeescript, Terry commented that switching to TempleOS would prevent my complaints as I could use his C variant. Made my day to have him comment.

squidmccactus 12y ago

Which operating system is this?

josteink 12y ago

Direct youtube links for those (like me) for whatever reason were unable to watch the videos directly in the page: 5-Minute Random Code Walk-Thru Episode #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoJfIbPGv8 Episode #2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqBc5FZH2g Episode #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlU8YywcAo Episode #4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9ocExv4xcs Episode #5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlnLQOFv_g Episode #6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaHfqkxfn8 Episode #7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRDmfeQxpQ Episode #8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22goZWnhMOw Episode #9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzkLAlYlbbo Episode #10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B6-pxFvcrM Episode #11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MVG2e2Mco Episode #12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_Qm47_EDY Episode #13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SahDS27GdQ0