That Editor | Hacker News Reader

That Editor

github.com

207 pointsphplovesong27 comments

By the way, the reason his channel has been pretty inactive for a couple of years is because he has been enrolled in college (Yes, he is already in his 40s but didn't have a degree), to which he just recently graduated and got a master.

I must take this opportunity for anyone who is unfamiliar with 'Bisqwit' to take a look at his YouTube channel. For over a decade he has released, admittedly in spurts, some of the most clever programming videos I've seen. This is a sky-high IQ guy who codes for the love of coding, not for money or career advancement (indeed, he was a bus driver when he was most prolific with his videos).

Small 3D engines, C trickery, reverse engineering old video games, soundchip coding, creating a terminal emulator.. all that sort of gritty, low level fun stuff. Go to https://www.youtube.com/@Bisqwit/videos - hit "Popular", and find something that catches your eye.

Fanboy over and out.. :-)

His Portal 2 maps are all as mind-bending as you’d expect too.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/bisqwit/myworkshopfiles/?appid...

> admittedly in spurts

I haven't watched his videos, but this seems like a sign of quality. Making a video when you have a great idea vs making a video a week or day just to feed the algorithm.

I love his content, and his contributions to speedrunning, TAS, reverse engineering, etc. although his obsession with writing diatribes against Islam weirds me out.

https://bisqwit.iki.fi/

https://bisqwit.iki.fi/story/apologetics/islamicdeception/

The fact that he's Jewish might have something to do with that...

You claim, as a "fact", that someone who wrote this [0], identifies as Jewish?

[0]: https://bisqwit.iki.fi/jesus/

Well, obviously not anymore, but since he belongs to a sect of Christianity (Hebraic Roots) that incorporates Torah law and certain Jewish traditions, can you blame me for getting a little confused?

I hadn't seen that article.

I can't speak to his beliefs or identity without further research, but Messianic Judaism is a thing, and most identify as Jewish (source: my wife belongs to such a congregation). From this writing, I'll assume that's his belief, as a common tenet is referring to Jesus by his Jewish name.

To be clear, "Jewish" can describe a person's religion, culture, or genetics, and other traits if you want to dip into stereotypes. It's definitely possible to be just one and not the others.

nothing actually. historically and to this day these cultures coexist in peace and respect for the most part (having mutual respect for abrahamic roots). within the middle east and far outside of it.

It helps reinforce my overall belief, that people smart in some aspects of life, might be very un-smart/crazy/bigoted/ignorant etc in other parts of life.

I mean, look at the website, 7/10 of the "Recently Updated" are about religion, while most are about Islam. A religion that he categorically denies and thinks is false, yet is seemingly obsessed with? Strange stuff to me.

It's been a few years since I last watched his stuff. He always had that crazy genius vibe, similar to Terry Davis but but not as unhinged and much more friendly and wholesome. I'm fascinated how these individuals that are clearly immensely gifted with rational thought are also religious fanatics. How do they rationalize it? I can understand believing in a supreme being but it also being the one described in bible seems difficult to rationalize.

If you're a schizo, it's probably pretty easy to rationalize: you've heard your god talk to you and tell you these things. It's easy to go "You're obviously crazy, this can't have happened!" from the outside looking in, but it's far harder to reject your own experiences out of hand as obviously false.

Doubly so because the types of experiences you get tend to be very hard to disprove. It's usually not something like "There's a yellow demonic entity running around deep in the valley by the mountain" where it's something that can be checked and explained, like actually just a moose who got tangled up in a yellow wintercoat or something, and is running around irritated trying to get it off. Rather it tends to be more "God is speaking to me through my mind, and only does so to special people" or "These people are trying to make me be as miserable as I was before I found God by making me reject him, they must be servants of Satan".

Really, if anything, I would say gifted people are probably way more likely to become religious fanatics if they have these experience. We do not have a good explanation for these things (you're sick in the head, something something dopamine does not work too well for otherwise perfectly functional and rational people), and the explanations that we do have must more or less be taken on faith. You need to trust that the person explaining these things to you is both more capable of judging the situation than you are, and has your best interests in mind. For most gifted people, the chance of both of these being true in any particular situation is abyssmally small.

This applies even more so in mental healthcare, where we're practically at the same stage of technological advancement as we were when trepanation and bloodletting were state of the art in physical medicine. We have a long way to go before we can truly make the "You're crazy!" explanation stick for those who are used to living in a world that is inevitably wrong about most things, whether subtly or overtly. Really, if you're used to being the smartest guy in the room, what choice do you have? What choice do you have but to trust yourself? Yes, you might be delusional and wrong, but you know the world at large is delusional and wrong on countless subjects as well. Why trust them more than you trust yourself, when just about every single experience you've had in life has fed into your belief that you are fundamentally better at judging reality than most people are?

everyone is the same, just a different flavor :). (in otger words> i agree :D).

am a muslim, but totally enjoy his videos. we all carry our weird conditions with us as a burden, its ok. he does so much nice and good outside of that :)

It is a programming editor for DOS environments. More specifically, it is something that looks like a programming editor for DOS environments, modelled after the editor called Joe.

For the why, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMBQmhO8KqI

As an aside, there is a company called that corporation which makes specialized Audio ICs like the THAT2181 blackmer VCA, which allows you to control the volume of an audio signal with extremely low distortion and noise figures.

Anybody who is into audio electronics should check out their application notes and datasheets as there is much to learn.

I have several of them in my personal library. They’re a great starting point for a lot of circuits. I’m pretty sure I first discovered them by tearing apart an old Kurzweil digital piano. I echo the sentiment, their docs are worth perusing.

You can hear him talk more about his editor choices in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/ZMBQmhO8KqI (That Editor is around the 12:00 mark)

"But then I wanted to make a video with wider screen, and despite my best efforts, I could not binary-patch Borland C++ to perfectly cooperate with screens that have other width than 80 characters."

totally fan of this guys approach to pretty much everything :D. amazing inspiration, to me atleast

    This editor is not meant to be used by humans.

    Caveats:

    * This version is hardcoded for Finnish keyboard layout.

I have always wanted a Mario walking in the menu bar of my IDE.

I love it! Of course Bisqwit would be responsible for such a project. Truest hacker mindset of "I need it, so I'll make it."

> I could not binary-patch Borland C++ to perfectly cooperate with screens that have other width than 80 characters. So I was cornered and had no choice but to make my own editor. I could no longer remember how to use Turbo Vision, and I couldn’t bother to study, so I wrote the editor entirely from scratch.

That reasoning doesn't make much sense. I think he just wanted to write an editor (which is fine). I'm pretty sure I used DJGPP's RHIDE with 132 columns, and doing Turbo Vision stuff following the excellent documentation is pretty simple.

Yeah I think MultiEdit supported wider text resolutions as well. There’s also setedit http://setedit.sourceforge.net/

I loved RHIDE, thanks for reminding me of it.

Text-mode editor for FreePascal probably works fine in bigger text-modes as well and still looks a lot like traditional programming editors.

Or for just a good DOS-compatible code editor, if looks were not so important, he could have just used vim or emacs.

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