Hacker News Reader

Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

While there's an element of truth here, that kernel is being overplayed.

It's important to be open minded, but at the same time it's important to also have a filter for what's actually worth examining in depth and what isn't. Otherwise you waste your time going down fruitless cul-de-sacs to nothing. Which is exactly how you end up spending your life making something completely useless like TempleOS.

Additionally, the author thrives on attention. He's been around forever, it's true. But every time he gets any attention he goes on what seems to be a manic streak which erupts in the racist diatribes and nonsense.

He certainly does need medical attention. He does not need this kind of attention, treating his delusion seriously.

View on HN

Of course TempleOS has little practical value; even Terry would admit that. However, it is inspirational on a number of levels:

It's the preservation and extension of an archaic, dying style of computing: the single-user, programming-oriented, low-level and transparently-abstracted environment once common amongst micros.

It's going against the grain and doing something different in a time when (for very good practical reason) popular environments are approaching monoculture.

It's a tremendous achievement for a single person.

It's proof that not only can people create amazing things in spite of mental illnesses, but also because of them.

It's sad that even on Hacker News, there are people that can't accept that programs themselves can be art (more than simply the "engine" behind a work of art).

It's not useless if you learn something from it. If you don't want to learn anything, that's fine.

But I certainly learned a few new ideas from taking some time to judge it objectively.

If tomorrow someone launched a new Linux shell because of an interesting idea they'd seen in TempleOS, or was inspired to write a new IDE which borrowed some features, then the world is a better place for it.

p.s. everyone thrives on attention.

> If tomorrow someone launched a new Linux shell because of an interesting idea they'd seen in TempleOS

Yeah, this is not going to happen.

A) It's been around for a long time.

B) He's not some misunderstood genius full of great ideas.

You really want to begrudge somebody getting a little bit of recognition now and again from the community for something they've worked on for such a long time?

And you'd like to go say what they've made is worthless?

I'm really saddened to see such a lack of empathy. In life we procreate and create, offspring and projects the only chance our fleeting sparks have to last into the long night of eternity. We should always be charitable to others who've made something, that we may one day be judged by the same measure.

Empathy aside: how many operating systems (kernel + userland) have you written, chummer?

The amount of time and effort you've put into something has no bearing on its quality, and thus whether it deserves recognition or not. It's absurd to think it does.

> And you'd like to go say what they've made is worthless?

It's patently obvious that it's worthless. What possible use does it serve? Morbid curiosity is the best you can say for it.

> We should always be charitable to others who've made something, that we may one day be judged by the same measure.

I judge my own work by an even less charitable measure than I'm using on TempleOS.

> Empathy aside: how many operating systems (kernel + userland) have you written, chummer?

This is the most ridiculous/tired response on the face of the earth to all criticism. "How many movies have you made?" "How many hit songs have you written?"

The fact that you even think that's a valid response says more about you than me.

So, none then? I've written zero operating systems, and like two userland tools (mostly special-purpose file archiving and packing stuff because I didn't know about tar). Then again, I still have respect for people that have bashed together crappy toy OSs.

Most people are worthless (just look at the distribution of wealth on this planet), most art is worthless, etc. etc. If we judged all our actions based on some silly notion of how ultimately worthless they were, we never would've gotten out of the trees because why bother.

As my mom used to say, a doodle has a right to be a doodle. Lighten up.

>> Empathy aside: how many operating systems (kernel + userland) have you written, chummer?

> This is the most ridiculous/tired response on the face of the earth to all criticism. "How many movies have you made?" "How many hit songs have you written?"

Can you explain why it's ridiculous? It seems reasonable to me. Because I haven't created an OS (or movie or hit song), I don't know that I could do any better than anyone I'd want to criticize, so I'm probably better off not criticizing.

> It's patently obvious that it's worthless. What possible use does it serve? Morbid curiosity is the best you can say for it.

Just curious, how much time have you spent using it? How much of the source have you read? How carefully did you read this article? Because if your answers to those questions are what I think they are, then you're just a dick.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com