Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
CIA who?
Might be a riff on https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... .
On Terry A. Davis
91–100 of 105 posts
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#92Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system. Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing.
[deleted]
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#93Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system. Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing.
That’s the impressive part, it takes a certain drive and vision to work on the same project for more than a decade
Drive, vision, and sometimes insanity.
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
CIA who?
Might be a riff on https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... .
It's actually a riff on this Terry Davis quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbG6u86t4bA
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#95Re: On Terry A. Davis
#96Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system. Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing.
>Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system.
But could they do it while suffering from severe psychosis and believing that they were being hunted by bioluminescent CIA operatives?
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#97Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system. Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing.
> Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing. At some point in the 1970s or 1980s, Ticketmaster made the extremely unusual decision of writing their own operating system for VAX. Even back then, that was a pretty weird decision. And it wasn't Terry's idea, they started doing it before he worked there. https://news.y…
Thanks for the info! Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking it was a weird path to take.
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, it's not real mode. I think I should have said ring zero.
That would be correct, and it also has a couple of interesting consequences. He liked to brag about how he can do however many millions of context switches per second; not entirely sure how valuable that is but it's fun. I think this also touches on the other thing that makes TempleOS cool. It was designed as a modern C64, and a lot of the weird design decisions come directly from that. It's a hacker's operating syst…
I think he analogised it to riding a motorcycle while Windows/Linux was driving a car or something. Dangerous but fun.
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't have 10 years of uninterrupted time to spend on an art project. Most of those who do choose to spend that time on something other than writing a compiler and OS. EDIT: to be clear, that doesn't mean it's not impressive or not a great achievement. It's a fantastic piece of art IMO.
This is why I think Richard Stallman had some success. His living requirement where so low that for most of the 1980's/early 90's, he only had to work 6 weeks to make all the money he needed for that year. It opened him up to work on building/promoting GNU and FSF. I have said for years that things like Free software would have come along eventually, he just happened to be in the right position to make it happen when…
And because he built actually useful things.
I never worked with Solaris and the like, but it's my understanding the GNU tools were useful enough that they got routinely installed on the commercial unixes before Linux came along.
This is sadly something that seems to be getting lost. GNU tooling doesn't seem that competitive anymore, and the trend is to write newer, fancier replacements, like ripgrep for example.
Re: On Terry A. Davis
#100Not to trivialise his achievement, but I'd be willing to wager any moderately competent systems programmer, if given 10+ years and no other commitments (work or family) could write a programming language, compiler, and real mode operating system for an x86_64 system. Side note, why were Ticketmaster hiring systems programmers writing such low level code? I grew up in the 90s/00s so missed this era of computing.
Not to suggest that the parent comment trivialises the work, but there is big difference between "could do it" and "did it". Only the later deserves respect.
Also, the parent commenter's hypothetical does not take into account that the "moderately competent systems programmer" would have to do this work while suffering from a debilitating mental illness.
To be clear, this is not simply a question of "Given 10+ years with no other committments, could someone else do this work?" The question is whether another person with schizophrenia has actually done this work, staying focused for such an extended period.
(If it's common for employed "developers" to have schizophrenia, then please disregard this comment.)