TempleOS: x86_64 HolyC Compiler/Assembler/Unassembler [video] | Hacker News Reader

Unassembler [video]

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110 pointsadamnemecek77 comments

There's not a single drop of technical discussion in these comments. For shame! Come on, people!

Correct, and these discussions have been happening forever and are always the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9683971.

As much as people like to throw stones at Terry, TempleOS does some really interesting things. It really is impressive that he's built an entire operating system from the ground up from first principals. There are some novel concepts in there; I loved his integration of sprites into source code.

The stones people throw are at a part of Terry that may be a side effect of the same thing that made him build his temple, but from what I've seen his digital work is universally praised in isolation.

I don't think people (here at least) really throw stones very much, and those that do usually get downvoted or rebutted pretty mercilessly. Some past Terry Davis threads:

He gets posted to usesthis.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7776743

A 5-minute random code walkthrough: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349910

The Temple Operating System: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017

Why Davis' TempleOS is better than Torvald's Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8779821

The majority of people really seem to respect his technical achievements, and "TempleOS does a really interesting thing ____" isn't an uncommon comment.

His video contrasting TempleOS with Linux is really interesting. It's unfortunate that many of the people who watched it didn't understand the points he was trying to make or just couldn't get past his inflammatory language. TempleOS seems to address many of the deficiencies of Linux for desktop usage.

> TempleOS seems to address many of the deficiencies of Linux for desktop usage.

What? Like networking and running concurrent programs? I guess I like my deficiencies....

Everyone likes functionality. But functionality comes at the price of complexity.

I just watched the TempleOS vs Linux video. Fantastic stuff. I had missed that one.

His OS looks fun. I started listing the things that I liked, and I was just repeating the points in the video.

It's crass that the comments on Terry's technical material always turn into a psychoanalysis roundtable, given he is a HN reader.

Especially because so many HN Commenters have little to no clue about serious mental illness.

Mental illness aside - he accomplished something that I can only dream of. I'm sure if I sat down, quit my job, and read hundreds of tutorials I could come out with some sort of OS. I'm not a fan of the whole religious aspect - but the core of the project is pretty amazing I think.

His illness is far beyond anything I've ever experienced. If anything, I believe that what Terry has accomplished is a powerful testament that people with serious mental illness are still capable of creating amazing things.

I knew someone else who made a jit C compiler similar to this, but for 68K (also where the entire environment is in a single memory map). Functions could be compiled when called. The advantage is that the compiler could treat arguments as constants for further optimization.

It's impressive that he made his own optimizing compiler, even if it is not C standard. From the video it has at least constant folding, dead code elimination and jump optimization. It's interesting that the intermediate code is in the form of a double-linked list for easy editing.

I would suggest to try to make a compiler which uses SSA- it's pretty simple and allows more optimizations, particularly CSE. I worked with Bob Morgan at one point, and I suggest his book on compilers as an accessible resource. He would like your jump optimization outer loop: repeat while we're still making progress.

I've often thought about this idea. It could be as simple as `#pragma jit` before a function call. If you're about to call a function that chews on a big dataset for several seconds, it's probably worth the effort. In particular I'm thinking of hot loops with an `if` statement or function pointer / virtual call.

I always find his videos fascinating but this is way over my head. Can someone in the know please provide a bit of a breakdown of the design decisions he has taken and how they compare with other compilers?

Very hard to follow his way of thinking but I am just shocked at the amount of work he has put into this. Just amazing !!!!

Everyone here should download the ISO and give it a go in virtualbox. It's surprisingly painless and quick to boot, and has an interesting and helpful startup guide. Take the time to check it out, it is truly fascinating!

I have followed Terry's endeavors throughout the years.

1. Why do all the source and headers have a .Z at the end?

2. I truly wish there was a way to help Terry share his gift. What he is capable of is truly a huge, huge accomplishment, especially for a single person.

Terry, if you read this. Thank you. Watching your videos makes me get in gear and read more..

I see his work as a real testament to the power of the individual when given the ability to focus and freed from restriction to pursue their calling in life.

Not drawing any parallels here, but I am sure that there have been many 'Joan of Arc' and 'Moses' in history, and only a very tiny number of those received any recognition or praise. How many doubtlessly countless numbers were forgotten or plain ignored? Their lifes work and passions laid bare for all to see, only to be shuffled away when they weren't successful by others measurements.

Tl;dr I see Terry as a reminder to march to your own drummer and to support others to do the same; whether they win or lose.

> march to your own drummer

Do you think that's what people with severe mental illness are doing?

It is possible to recognise the creativity his opportunity to focus on doing his own thing has allowed him to express without intending it to downplay the challenges of his mental illness.

Sure, but Smushman's comment isn't doing that. It's naive and ignorant feel-good bullshit.

And how is it you know that? The comment on its own does not provide enough information to jump to that conclusion.

> the power of the individual when given the ability to focus and freed from restriction to pursue their calling in life.

Most people with severe mental illness do not describe it as something that has freed them, nor given them focus, to pursue the one thing they really want to pursue.

There's a bunch of positive stuff about severe and enduring mental illness; and we need to protect people so that they can live the way they want to live; and we need to be careful to avoid the abuses of treatment that happened in the past (and still happen today); but romanticising a severe and enduring mental illness is fucking annoying.

This isn't his calling, it's his delusion's calling. and he's not freed from restriction - that's a fucking idiotic thing to say about someone who lives in relative poverty with severely limited options about where he lives and who with.

The near complete lack of understanding of severe mental illness, coupled with glib feel good platitudes, do real harm to many people.

I don't see that as saying that Terry is free to pursue his project because of his schizophrenia. Rather, Terry happens to be free to put a lot of time into TempleOS and the results are pretty amazing. Terry is also schizophrenic, but this is not freeing.

Dan BC:

I have found in my experience that the people using and applying the label 'mental illness' see it as some sort of barrier betwixt the person they are discussing and themselves. This is the 'normal' barrier. by relgating the person to this place (behind the wall as it were) a number of very large assumptions must be made, and my inclination is that some of these assumptions are pointless.

once upon a time, abstraction may have been viewed as a nasty 'mental illness'.

"Look at Grok. He so dumb. He tell me finger number could be more than hand plus hand. retard say dumbest things."

We call people who are socially inept mentally ill because they do not fit will into the structure of society, not because they are actually broken. There is a difference between Down's and Autism.

My comment focuses on the positive of his work and not to enter the category of personal attacks; which there is plenty of room to do so. But this is not a forum for discussing medical or psychological issues is it? It is for technical discussions. So I discussed the related I observed.

My advice though to you directly though is there is more to life than casting judgements, and when it comes to personal desires I have a hard time telling someone they are wrong if they are not infringing on anyone else.

You might do better to keep a more open mind to what drives people yourself.

Too many 'normal' and 'sane' people have wasted their own life in frivolous stuff. He has built something technically impressive with his own time.

I think I would prefer to be him than to be the wasteful normal one.

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