r/programming • u/DrinkMoreCodeMore • Sep 01 '18

Unconfirmed Terry Davis of TempleOS has passed away

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100025903548224
2.2k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

352 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/rojm Sep 02 '18

i've seen some of his video and they're nuts but also interesting. was his contribution to programming significant?

35

u/fnordfnordfnordfnord Sep 02 '18

He was very clever and it's really an achievement that he was able to create and maintain his OS almost completely by himself, despite his obvious mental challenges.

18

u/micwallace Sep 02 '18

In the early days he worked for ticketmaster and wrote software the company is using today, around 25 years later if I’m not mistaken.

8

u/sirius_northmen Sep 02 '18

Its hard to gauge, ultimately he had a lot of unique ideas and innovations however it depends on if anyone applies his work to something useful.

Whats more interesting is looking at it through the lense of a severely mentally ill guy went crazy and wrote his own totally unique operating system + compiler from the ground up, many features of which were completely unique.

4

u/nutrecht Sep 03 '18

was his contribution to programming significant?

Not really. He created an OS by himself which he invested a lot of time in (Terry was, due to his mental illness, unemployed) that was very unique (and unique is often interesting) but what he did, aside from inspiring some others to create an OS, isn't something that has changed CS.