
TempleOS - newswasboring
https://templeos.org/
======
kenster
I personally interviewed Terry and delivered a care package for him in '18.

I am Kenneth from the BBC interview:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4r3](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4r3)

Things were pretty much on a downward spiral after 4chan funded his drum set:
Terry got kicked out, and then Terry's van got impounded along with $1000 of a
lot of electronics. Once he was homeless living in CA, people thought (and
rightfully so) that he would die on the streets. It's such a shame what
happened, honestly. 15+ years of social isolation and events in his past
ultimately led to his downfall. His death made me very distraught, especially
after meeting him in person months prior. Meeting him left a profound effect
on me because he was so appreciative and seemed mentally sharp when he engaged
with me.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
What happened with the drum set?

~~~
gccxsse
People from 4chan donated money for a drumset. He got the drumset and then his
parents kicked him out because of the noise.

------
joshschreuder
I really miss reading Terry's comments here. He was the single reason I turned
on showdead - they weren't always insightful and were often offensive, but
they were always an interesting view into his mind.

~~~
thdrdt
You can find them here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis)

(small warning: he was very rasist, but because of his illness it is hard to
tell if he could do something about this)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
It only goes back to 2015, and replies on his oldest comments seem to imply he
was known on HN before then[1]. Was there another account?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis&next=926...](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis&next=9260587)

~~~
krebs_liebhaber
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos)

~~~
serf
don't forget this one

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOS](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TempleOS)

I remember seeing 4 or 5 different handles once he started getting
deaded/shadowbanned.

I miss him a lot. Not his spout-outs, but him and his technical insights.

------
smoyer
I think there's a real lesson to learn from Terry which was perhaps magnified
by both his personality and this community. The truth is that there are people
all around us that suffer from various degrees (and types) of mental illness.
Some are undiagnosed while others feel they need to hide their diagnosis due
to shame and/or public stigma. I appreciated that Terry didn't hide who he
was, nor did he shy away from saying what he thought. As pointed out elsewhere
on this thread, some of his comments could be offensive while others could be
brilliant. What we can learn from Terry's contribution here is that, we don't
know what demons others here are fighting and sometimes tolerance can be a
very charitable gift - not tolerance of abhorrent comments but rather
tolerance of the individual.

RIP Terry!

~~~
mettamage
IMO your comment (and others) show to me why privacy is such an important
thing.

Shame is one thing, and IMO already reason enough to want privacy but one
could argue that it's debatable.

Being bullied, however, (as stated in another comment) really shows why
privacy is needed. Even if you get all the praise in the world, if you get too
much negativity, one can die from it (most likely indirectly). I find it very
harsh and unfortunate to say, but this seems to be the case. While everything
is debatable, I could imagine that not everyone thought about this particular
reason (I haven't nor have I ever read this from privacy advocates) and find
it a more compelling reason to uphold privacy.

------
Netcob
I can totally understand why this is a constant source of fascination for
programmers. It's a one possible answer to the question "What would I do if I
was stranded on a deserted island with a working computer but no OS?". We use
all this software developed by other people, and many of us wonder how much of
that we could make ourselves, given enough time.

------
thdrdt
There are many great ideas in his OS and programming language.

One idea I miss very often while programming: embed info like pictures in your
code (as comment).

It would be great to add flowcharts, diagrams, screenshots into code as
comments (an IDE could collapse this as needed).

Does anyone know if there are languages that also can do this?

~~~
srgpqt
Seems like this could be achievable in any language with a special doc comment
notation that supports image references similar to Markdown.

~~~
zozbot234
Doc comment notation is not a language concern. You could simply start writing
Markdown with image references and if your documentation generator supports it
and can resolve these refs, they'll be included. A different approach is to
use a literate programming tool like NoWEB in which case the code is included
as part of the documentation, and extracted separately.

------
nathell
Also well worth reading: A constructive look on TempleOS
[http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-
temp...](http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/)

------
obecebo
I ported a SNES/SFC Emulator [1] to TempleOS earlier this year, and more
recently started porting the old Apogee game Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure [2]

[1] [https://gitlab.com/obecebo/bahamut](https://gitlab.com/obecebo/bahamut)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdUoEA8E54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdUoEA8E54)

------
kernoble
I didn't realize he died. It's a real shame that his illness had control of
him.

~~~
the_dripper
He didn't die because of his Schizophrenia in case you think so. He got hit by
a train because he was walking on train tracks and didn't see it.

~~~
hutzlibu
Was that sarcasm? A person without schizophrenia usually does not walk on
train tracks and in case they do, they usually are aware that trains can pass
by. So now while also other people sometimes get hit by trains, in his case
his mental condition might be related.

------
Ariez
Poignant quote

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmltIMPMeP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmltIMPMeP0)

------
lihaciudaniel
Rest in piece King Terry you'll always be the king of the.... CIA and the
cattles. You will always be the best

------
fauria
I remember this interesting read about Terry Davis and TempleOS from Vice:
_God 's Lonely Programmer_ \- [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-
lonely-progra...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-lonely-
programmer)

It was discussed in HN (2014):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8658283)

------
ndespres
The most sad part of Terry's death is that he became the object of fascination
and obsession of a forum of internet trolls who actively worked to make his
life worse. I think he was off his medication and homeless at the end of his
life, due in part to the goading of the trolls.

I was interested reading Terry's posts and thoughts, and spent some time
playing with TempleOS. Unfortunately some people couldn't leave him alone.

------
diath
Make sure to check out Shrine (based on TempleOS) that adds networking and
many other things.

Website: [https://shrine.systems/](https://shrine.systems/)

Source code:
[https://github.com/minexew/Shrine](https://github.com/minexew/Shrine)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I ask out of curiosity, not dismissiveness: What is the goal of this project?

Without context, it strikes me as somewhat akin to adding details to a
Picasso. The reason I'd use TempleOS is to get a peek into Terry Davis's mind,
so what happens when someone else adds networking support?

Is it seen as a research project? Just something fun to play with?

~~~
diath
I don't know, I'm not the author, just something I remember seeing related to
TempleOS, I'd guess just a hobby kind of thing, we're on _Hacker_ News after
all, so tinkering with technology just for the fun of it should be the
priority.

------
southphillyman
I was just wondering what happened to this guy since I rarely saw his comments
anymore. Didn't realize he was well known outside of this forum

------
void_nill
Some time ago I published four small articles[1] about templeOS. Unfortunately
I had less time to deal with this OS. I can only guess that you should have a
look at this OS. If you ignore all the religious information you can
experiment a lot. Even though Terry was very ill, I have an incredible respect
for what he did. There are not many people who have put their own OS on its
feet and even implemented very unusual ideas of their own. All this running on
ring 0 is pretty exciting.

[1]
[https://alligatorbrowser.github.io/voidnill.github.io/a/a32....](https://alligatorbrowser.github.io/voidnill.github.io/a/a32.html)

~~~
0xebfc
Oh, cool. I saved this to my templeOS notes.

I've been thinking about writing a technical analysis of TempleOS, in the
style of the the Xinu OS textbook [1]. No strong reason for doing so, though
it is curious how much more one could learn about him by identifying patterns
in the code and OS structure.

It will probably take me a while to recover from my current burnout to look at
a holy-influenced C dialect, though. A venture into the library of babylon
requires preparation. So, I'm just passively collecting writings that already
exist, and the likes, like you just posted. I'm on the #templeos IRC on
irc.rizon.net, if you would like to chat sometime. It's pretty inactive, with
sprinkles of relevant conversation occasionally.

1:
[https://xinu.cs.purdue.edu/#textbook](https://xinu.cs.purdue.edu/#textbook)

------
the_dripper
RIP Terry A. Davis

------
westmeal
Rest in peace Terry, you were gods programmer.

------
jerrycruncher
This has been discussed many times in the past [1].

tl;dr: The creator was a brilliant programmer who experienced a psychotic
break late in his life, which led to chronic and severe schizophrenia. He
killed himself in 2018.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=templeos.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=templeos.org)

~~~
mkl
Here are (some of?) his HN accounts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TempleOS](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TempleOS)

Warning: not for the faint of heart - banned for obvious reasons.

~~~
serf
>Warning: not for the faint of heart - banned for obvious reasons.

I lived through it - on 4chan, reddit , and HN.

It's still not obvious to me why he'd be banned, I don't think you should hand
wave it that easily.

The guy had mental issues, but he had some amazing lucidity at times.

If I owned a movie theatre or restaurant I surely wouldn't ask someone with
vocal tourettes to leave the establishment, and if I did i'd be ostracized all
over the media and community -- so it's not as clear to me as you seem to
think it should be why he was treated the way he was on the various forums.

I get that he said abrasive and racist comments routinely; but I think there
is something to be said about the fact that his voice was routinely listened
to and considered on 4chan's /g/, and routinely sequestered and removed on HN
and reddit. 4chan turning their attention to him wasn't a good thing, nor is
it usually _ever_ , but that forum _did_ give him a place to talk without fear
of bannings, karma struggle, deaded comments, whatever.

Treating someone as good as they are treated on 4chan is a _low_ bar. Back
then the HN method of constant deading and shadowbanning felt heavy handed and
unneeded; we're supposed to be adults who are aware that mentally ill
individuals exist in real life and here on HN, but the way it was dealt with
was by silencing an already schizophrenic person so that the 'normal' crowd
could go on with business as usual.

I can't think of a more head-in-the-sand response, and I'm not even saying
that it wasn't a required action to keep the forum discourse on some level of
civility , but boy does what happened to Terry make me feel nauseous -- the
same kind of feeling I get in the pit of my stomach that is usually a sign for
me that I am witnessing something morally uneven. I don't know the solution,
nor do I claim to. I just feel bad about what happened.

As someone who chatted in emails with him after his bannings, I still feel bad
about his treatment and demise, and I miss him and his technical insights
immensely. I think he got a poor run of life, and I wish that more people had
been supportive of him, able to filter out the profane for the insight --
especially since he became fascinatingly technically capable and astute when
spoken to personally with your 'vocabulary filter' on.

Terry was an individual by which most mistook his trees for the forest -- and
I'm glad to read in this thread that I'm not the only one with that positive
sentiment towards him and his memory.

------
rvnx
I'm not sure I understand what's going on there ?

~~~
halayli
Youtube Terry Davis. There's a thin line between insanity and a genius.

~~~
dekken_
you could say they often overlap

~~~
moron4hire
I suppose one _could_ say that, but it would not be supported by evidence.
This is just visibility bias. Sane geniuses aren't loud.

------
seek3r00
AFAIK, TempleOS seems to be the only operating system running everything in
supervisor mode.

I wonder what would happen if we can find a way to build software protection
in supervisor mode, ditching user mode and associated context switches.

~~~
cturner
Agree this is interesting, and user mode looks like legacy for some major
domains.

For example, if you are building a grid computer, you don't need mechanisms
that were designed to protect university students from one another. Consider
if everything is driven from a single codebase. Your type system can provide
protections that have traditionally been done by the kernel.

I am currently playing with this. Have a boot loader up, and a handoff to c++.
Today I am looking at page-management.

There are some interesting trade-offs that come from unconventional approaches
like this. For example, I have read that if you make SIMD registers available
to the kernel, it hurts the performance of context-switching.
([https://os.phil-opp.com/minimal-rust-kernel/](https://os.phil-
opp.com/minimal-rust-kernel/))

A mitigation I am considering: do all interrupt handling on one core, and then
have all other cores for work-processing. Use channels to communicate between
the burnt interrupt core and the worker cores. Downside of this: worker cores
would need to poll for new messages. In low-activity periods, I could slow the
poll interval. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has gone deep on
this, or knows of papers.

~~~
dirtydroog
Technologies such as DPDK are designed to get the kernel out of the way. For
some applications it has no reason to play a part once the system has booted,
it's just an overhead.

For what you're doing I recall reading about IncludeOS[1] which seems to have
similar goals

[1] [https://www.includeos.org](https://www.includeos.org)

~~~
cturner
Thanks for the reference to includeos. They do seem to have built something in
the spirit of what I have been looking into.

------
DaveSapien
For those interested in a (very good) overview of Terry and TempleOS in a
video documentary format:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg)

