
Farewell - gobr
https://byuu.org/articles/farewell
======
btrask
(For those who don't know, Byuu is a member here and will likely see comments
in this thread.)

Hi Byuu. You don't know me, but I've been a fan of your work since the early
days of bsnes. I've also seen at least some of your "detractors'" criticisms,
while lurking. (My "favorite" was that you don't know enough math to emulate
the 3D graphics of the N64, because you didn't stay in school. I didn't know
they taught how to write SNES emulators in school either... Maybe I was sick
that day.)

Anyway... Please don't be too hard on yourself. I think you're more mature
than most(?) of your critics, and more importantly, you've made several
comments and actions that make me think you have a genuine desire to self-
improve.

Social graces seem to come more naturally to some people than others. The rest
of us have to work it out for ourselves. You're a smart person, so I know you
can do this if you devote the time to it. Of course, thinking of yourself as
smart tends to be an obstacle, and the journey tends to start where you least
expect it.

If you'll allow me to give a word of caution, avoid distractions. Spend some
time by yourself pulling back from people online, and not writing code either.
There are problems in life that no amount of code can help. If you really want
to solve this, don't get too caught up in exploring Tokyo either. :)

I'm sorry if bsnes/higan hasn't made you happy, but if you still have some
energy left, I know you can find a way to get what you really want out of
life.

Thanks for your incredible effort, and godspeed.

~~~
byuu
Working on bsnes and higan were the things that made me most happy. Well, bug
hunting was of course stressful but the joy of fixing a bug and seeing new
games running was always well worth it! I'm definitely going to miss it a lot.

It was everything else that was a problem. If I could have just been left
alone to code in peace and without all these pesky health and work issues, I'd
be very happy to continue.

I think I still have a ways to go on the self-improvement, but it's hit a
point where I think I need a few months' break to go at it offline, and maybe
let my hands rest a while from typing so much. I ended up coming back to
things the last two bouts of depression, so we'll see.

Thanks for the kind words, take care as well!

~~~
derefr
> Working on bsnes and higan were the things that made me most happy.

What _about_ this work made you happy? What was the reward? You might be able
to capture it in a different way.

I don’t get the sense that it was something to do with making the people who
used your emulators happy, per se, so probably “solving someone’s problem and
seeing them light up” isn’t going to do it for you.

I’d guess that helping to conserve other artistic expressions [to ensure
people can experience them the same way they did on the original hardware,
long after you’re gone] would make you happy? Especially if you could use your
specialized knowledge and experience to do so, in a way where it’s not
necessarily true that anyone else would have come along to do the same thing
if you hadn’t done it.

Perhaps you could volunteer in a consulting/advisory capacity for some of the
Archive.org software-library preservation projects? Not so much programming,
as pointing out the pitfalls in the architectural decisions of what other
people are programming. Like a software security consultant, but for “ensuring
the original work is conserved and reproduced with 100% fidelity” instead of
“ensuring nobody can exploit the software.”

~~~
byuu
> What about this work made you happy? What was the reward?

It's like a really complicated puzzle. I have this game that's not working,
and I have this 2 GiB trace log of millions of lines of CPU instructions and
registers. I have to sort through it to understand where things went wrong.
Sometimes it's obvious and takes five minutes, sometimes it takes two weeks
and is mind-bending (like a loop reading from a non-existent I/O register that
only breaks because eventually a DMA transfer occurs in between cycle
instructions that fetches the correct value onto the data bus, which stays
persistent through to the next cycle that compares the value read to finally
break said loop.)

I really enjoyed over-architecting the code, and I would build these massively
elaborate (read: slow) designs to handle the most ridiculous edge cases (like
stacking Game Genie cartridges one after another recursively. It's an
_incredibly_ inefficient way of getting more cheat code slots, but you can do
it on real hardware, and so I wanted to preserve that experience.)

> I don’t get the sense that it was something to do with making the people who
> used your emulators happy

That of course brought me joy as well. The tone of the farewell post aside,
98% of people throughout my time in emulation have been absolutely wonderfully
supportive. It's meant the world to me.

> in a way where it’s not necessarily true that anyone else would have come
> along to do the same thing if you hadn’t done it.

I'm under no delusions of granduer, these were "just video games", but I
definitely had the sense that if I didn't do this, no one else would. The SNES
was a large part of my childhood, and I had the skill and time to do this, so
I went for it.

------
byuu
I'll take my leave from HN as well now.

It's truly been an honor! I've always greatly appreciated the links to my
articles shared here, and the discussions with everyone on these and other
submissions on the site.

I'm hoping to return one day when things settle down a bit in my life.
Hopefully when that day comes I'll have some great new things to share. Until
then, take care everyone!

------
honkycat
I totally feel the "I hate that my only talent is computer programming." I am
in the exact same boat. I really don't even like the career anymore, other
than the money, which I would trade in a heart-beat for a stable job that
allowed more leisure time and made OK money.

I worked extremely hard on a start-up for half of my 20s and I ended up with
basically nothing to show for it. Employers do not seem that interested in my
start-up, they want "People with experience scaling large systems." Whoops.

Now I'm sending out my CV and I'm not getting many bites.

~~~
beefhash
The job market has been very hard on everyone lately. And looking at current
event, I don't think that's going to improve in the foreseeable future.

------
aidenn0
Thank you byuu for all the work you've done. Be proud of what you've done, and
good luck with your future endeavors!

------
reassembled
Byuu, your code base is awesome and I've been studying it a lot lately. I'm
not programming emulators, I'm studying your architectural design more than
anything. Your passion and dedication really shows. Best of luck in your
future.

I've also had bouts of RSI and it can really be frustrating, especially when
what you do shapes so much of how one thinks of oneself, and that starts to
whittle away.

~~~
byuu
Thank you kindly! The structural design aspects of programming was one of my
favorite parts. I may've gone a bit too far in the final releases of higan
with the reference-counted tree to describe system states (specifically
serializing the tree is quite involved), but I'm still really happy with the
result ^-^;

Hopefully a respite from coding in my spare time will help my hands recover a
bit.

------
a_t48
Good luck, byuu! Your emulation work is an inspiration. :) I'm jealous of your
Tokyo move - I tried last year but failed to secure a work visa (only time
being a college dropout has actually hurt me).

------
matheusmoreira
Thank you for everything you've accomplished. The world is immeasurably richer
because of you and everyone who helped make these accurate emulators a
reality.

------
serf
Byuu. Thanks for the technical effort. I've always been impressed by bsnes.

------
nonbirithm
I think an important facet of open source is portraying the right
expectations.

I feel like I have an inverse problem to the one the author describes.
Personally I work on projects for a really long time in private, not having to
worry about dealing with other people since everything is done by me only, and
wonder how I should eventually portray the project to the public. My
motivation to do things shifts wildly from week to week, and I can spend
months at a time on one single project and suddenly just stop cold one day as
if it never happened. I keep wondering how that's compatible with involving
yourself with the community, if they'll wonder where I'm at a month from now.
In my case the project is specifically meant for contribution for other people
or it won't take off (a mod system) so it feels inevitable I'd have to do it
some day. But I don't know if I can keep it up after it's announced without
getting burnt out by interacting with people, and delivering on the things I
want to accomplish. I'm reminded of the author of uBlock Origin specifically
refusing donations for this reason, to ensure he feels no sense of
responsibility to "make good" on what people give him. He also mentions the
same motivation issue.

I have at one point been in a spot where I've worked on something with a
similar amount of zeal for months on end, literally _every single day_ , then
dropped it out of nowhere, then had someone come up to me and ask me to finish
it with them, and then literally being _unable_ to get myself to write more
code. Like, I was sitting at the screen, doing _nothing at all_ for _hours_ ,
unable to bring myself to care. Even though this person reached out to me
personally over one of my projects, which had never happened before in my
life, and I liked their company! Part of me still wanted it to be finished
too. But I just didn't feel like it anymore. I feel a lot of guilt over that,
still. So I know I have been in that spot before.

I keep working at my current projects though, regardless of the amount of
progress. It's just an interesting hobby right now, if a somewhat obsessive
one. I'm always reminded of the portrayal of Robert Graysmith in the film
_Zodiac_ , where he explains he does so much investigation into the titular
case "because nobody else will." That's exactly how I feel with my long-term
projects. Perhaps byuu felt the same at some point. Maybe that attitude is
what got me this far all along.

Still, so many times I feel like I'm just grasping at straws or not making the
progress I want. But giving it to the community leaves a sense of obligation
if I have these goals that are still left unfulfilled, which I easily end up
imagining worst-case leading into whatever drama of "such and such project not
doing what it envisions." And of course I will never _expect_ someone to pick
up the torch, tempting as it feels. They _could_ , but in the end it's their
choice, and I have no right to obligate them.

This thought bothers me a lot. What reminded me of this in relation to the
article specifically was the author's mention of wishing he could just code in
peace without all the extra baggage surrounding the project and other things
in his life he describes. Currently I would describe myself as "coding in
peace," it being closed-source at the moment, and I'm wondering if I'll end up
getting myself into all that someday. Then again, the alternative feels like
wandering aimlessly in this solitary coding marathon for months on end at a
glacial rate of progress, not quite knowing if my designs or implementations
are the "right" way to advance the project, which feels equally troublesome. I
don't feel smart (or perhaps arrogant) enough to believe that outright. And
also, wasn't I supposed to use this thing if it _does_ get finished? Otherwise
why spend so long coding it up at all?

After a while this cycle of thinking wears me out. I can totally understand
the author's feelings, even if they aren't quite caused by the same reasons.
It's a lot of time spent on a small amount of things, in the pursuit of these
potentially lofty goals. I guess it's necessary to step back every once in a
while and reframe things.

That doesn't even go into careers, which is a different boat entirely.

All that might have been a random tangent. It's just a thought I've been
mulling over.

Anyway, I should say this: Thanks, byuu, for all your contributions to the
emulation scene over the years. Give yourself a good block of vacation and go
explore Tokyo sometime. You deserve it.

------
Bananaman28
Take care of yourself Byuu, I've always had nothing but respect for you and
your work. Best of luck!

------
AdmiralAsshat
What, specifically, has byuu said in the past that has lead him to need to
disappear?

~~~
asveikau
Whatever it is, it wouldn't shock me if he were being too hard on himself. I
have seen him comment here for instance, and I do not follow the scene at all,
but many of those were interesting comments.

I am only skimming the linked article elsewhere in the thread and it seems too
hard on him too.

------
srtjstjsj
Another soul lost due to their inability to prevent letting anonymous assholes
make them feel bad.

~~~
byuu
I give you my word, they've had a go at me online since 1998. I'm not worried
about criticism directed my way. I mostly deserved it anyway.

But they went after my friends. Someone on an imageboard compiled a list of my
friends' real names, photographs they had posted, locations where they lived
... really creepy stuff.

I'm stepping down because I don't want my personal friends and the dozens of
volunteers who helped develop my emulators caught in the crossfire.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I have no idea who you are, but I'm sorry to hear this. People can be truly
awful and I wish the world had fewer obsessed, creepy stalker types in it.

------
Mindless2112
I'll believe byuu cares about preserving history when he's stopped blocking
the Wayback Machine from archiving his site.

Edit: The good work someone has done is no excuse for anything.

> _The problem is that the internet is not like any other time in human
> history: everything we ever say and do gets recorded and indexed, all
> readily available to anyone curious, for all of time. This is new, and it 's
> something that society has not really adapted to yet. I think we will reach
> that point in a generation or two. But right now, it seems impossible to be
> forgiven for our past mistakes. They all add up and weigh us down like an
> albatross around our necks. Stay around on the internet long enough, and it
> will eventually crush even the best of us._

> _I could go back and read the things written about me from 2015 by people I
> 've since made peace with and anger myself again. But that's not who they
> are today: that's who they were._

> _People change. I 'm embarrassed myself seeing how I've acted in the past. I
> don't stand behind much of my old writing, some of it literally decades old
> now. I've been online since I was a teenager; obviously not everything has
> aged well. You don't have to forget the past, but you have to be willing to
> give people second chances in life._

Like all perfectionists, he's found that he's not always happy with his past
self. He wants an undo button for reality. He knows he can't have it but is
still unable to accept it. Even now.

~~~
nayuki
Same. It seems he's also blocking other archiver tools by showing "Please
click the button below to enter byuu.org: [I am not a robot button]":
[https://archive.vn/NYreE](https://archive.vn/NYreE)

~~~
rsynnott
If a site disobeys robots.txt, I see no particular issue in taking further
measures to dissuade it.

