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God's Lonely Programmer

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11–20 of 339 posts

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#12

Could we get TempleOS un-shadowbanned for this thread?

I personally would love to have him host an AMA-style thread where we could ask him things about TempleOS and his illness.

I'm tentative as to how that would turn out though.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#13
I find this guy's moments of clarity amazing. I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses in any form, but it surprises me how clearly he understands how the rest of the world views him. It makes me think about what the world might be like if we reverse the situation, and the article were about the only man who can't hear the voice of God.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#15
post #3

> As an undergrad he’d been hired at Ticketmaster to program operating systems. Ticketmaster, huh! Does anyone know anything about what they were working on?

In the early to mid-90s I saw a lot of strange systems building exercises. Large companies building their own email systems from scratch. Creating their own custom Windows widgets. Building their own databases from scratch.

At the time IT was more of a white-glove environment. When the only people handling it were the tools makers themselves, a lot would get done by a couple smart people in some nook or cranny of the organization.

Of course this didn't last, as state of the art enterprise software eventually over-ran them, and the experts wound up joining software firms.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#16
post #5

Terry is technically brilliant, but I just don't understand TempleOS. I can't tell if he's serious, or it's a tongue in cheek concept.

It's very real. I've installed it in a VM and played around for a while - it's technically very impressive and has a HUGE number of utilities and weird little features.

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#18
post #12

Could we get TempleOS un-shadowbanned for this thread?

I personally would love to have him host an AMA-style thread where we could ask him things about TempleOS and his illness. I'm tentative as to how that would turn out though.

In case you missed it, there's a link in the article to a sort-of-Q&A discussion he took part in a couple years back on MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son...

(Back then he called his OS "LoseThos" and used that as his username.)

Re: God's Lonely Programmer

#20
What fascinates me about Terry is that his schizophrenia doesn't somehow prevent his ability to make something as complex as an entire operating system.

Maybe this suggests that while schizophrenics look discordant to the rest of us, there's an internal consistency that very much makes sense.

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