I've never seen ANYTHING like this before... Temple OS

Terry Davis may not be as well-known as Linus Torvalds, but his open source operating system may be a legacy that will live on forever. What is it, and how do you use it?

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Title: Laszlo - Supernova

[weareallbeingwatched]

Is not C. Is not C++... it is C†

Greatest programmer who ever lived.

[Glorin]

Being a senior programmer, I know full well how surreal this guy's work is... It's like building a skyscrapper by yourself, barehanded.

[footnuke]

Gotta remember that Terry had enough genius to not only create an *entire OS* from scratch while battling the waking nightmares of schizophrenia, but also to quietly crank out one of the smoothest Catholicism/computer science crossover puns (Holy C / Holy See) in history. Rest easy, Terry.

[kevindavis]

Thank you for the review of Terry's OS . He evaluated things from his own unique prospective. when still in high school he was using a C 64 to do his calculus homework the teacher called him on it and he said but I wrote the program ...after explaining the program he was allowed to use it but still had to do 1 problem a day by hand . I tried to get him to write a game program to use a exercise bicycle interface I had made the faster you peddle the faster you man would go on the screen it was fun to out run the ghosts in packman and worked well with joust .. he looked at it and dismissed the idea " no one wants to exercise to computer games wouldn't even let me pay him to do it ... this was 1985 well before x box and Nintendo had any interactive games ( sigh.. what could have been ) The last picture you have of him on his left is what he called a shaper he made a 3D milling machine out of a dermal tool it worked well carving a bar of soap or balsa wood but wasn't smooth ( chatter from a flexible frame and a rotary file bit not a milling bit that he needed ) so he tossed it in a dumpster :( .. What he didn't realize was the mechanical problems were easily solvable ..the most amazing part of it was that he could give it a CAD drawing of a part and it would figure out the tool path so a self programming 3 D milling machine WOW !!! As a Millwright I can tell you that program was light years ahead of its time ... Terry Davis was my younger brother RIP Terry ... Kevin Davis

[atrainIk]

Can we take a moment to appreciate how Terry -- at the height of his schizophrenia -- still documented his code better than ~99% of developers?

[dmsalomon]

You might think that this is total garbage, but any programmer worth his salt can tell that terry was an absolute genius. Designing a system like this is not easy. Yes it's imperfect, but for a single person to design something this unique from scratch is just incredible in my opinion.

[antimitsu]

I met Terry on a bus once while I was on my way to computer science class. He asked me if I was a federal agent, completely convinced. I had no idea who he was or what that interaction meant until much later. Truly haunting to think back on it.

[liquidsorrow]

"A idiot admires complexity. But a genius admires simplicity" -Terry A Davis

[nehemiahalvarado]

Linus: This interface is so cluttered

Linus in 2 weeks: "10 ways TempleOS is just better"

[Sizifus]

Not only this man has written his own language, kernel and a compiler, he managed to introduce 3D shapes, pictures and sound files into ASCII format. That is beyond insane. He definitely deserves the title of "the smartest programmer who ever lived"

[DicePunk]

Imagine a world devastated by war and the only computer that survives is a toughbook with TempleOS.

[BananaPhoPhilly]

I don't think Linus quite understood how amazing it was that Terry figured out a way to encode 3D rendered graphics in a text file lol

[marciomaiajr]

"The CIA might glow but Terry shines." RIP Terry.

[shayneoneill]

I remember reaching out to Terry just to see if he was OK, he seemed a bit scrambled at the time, and he was actually a genuinely nice person. Granted I have a bit of experience with schizophrenia after my best friend in highschool got it pretty seriously, so I have a high tolerance for psychosis, but he meant well. He was a genius trapped in a world of delusion and bad choices. The OS was nutty, but it was packed with interesting ideas and the poor guy actually deserved a bit of respect, not for making a functional OS, the thing was barely functional, but for actually trying out some genuinely interesting ideas. The beauty of science is, the experiment doesnt have to work to learn something from it, so its one of the great ironies of science that this schizophrenic religious dude was doing more science than most PhD weilding computer science departments will do in a lifetime. But oh man was he suffering. Schizophrenia can make life a living hell.

[paul_]

I am not the best programmer, but i know that creating an entire OS (and Kernel), compiler, Window-manager, file manager, etc from scratch alone takes an absolute genius
I have mad respect for this man

[yusashow]

This is seriously the last OS I expected Linus to make a video on

[JojoBojob]

Actually big respect for covering this without making fun of Terry and his mental state. Very professional

[redsmash]

Terry is a tragic case, if he didn't suffer from Schizophrenia, I have little doubt his name would be among the top tech giants we know today. Man was a phenomenal programmer.

[cogspace]

Being reminded of what was lost with Terry's illness never ceases to make my heart ache. He had the brilliance of a natural born tinkerer and the drive of a man haunted by phantoms. The breadth and depth of his creation is truly hard to fathom. TempleOS is a unique product of a person who was desperately clinging to the only thing that still made sense to him.

[itskarudo]

"the pope probably doesn't know what a compiler is"
- Terry A. Davis