TempleOS | Down the Rabbit Hole

Fredrik Knudsen · 7.8M views · 2018-12-22 · 1:25:52

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Overview

Fredrik Knudsen's 86-minute documentary on Terry A. Davis, creator of TempleOS, tracing his work, his schizophrenia and his decline. It is a chronological video essay built on his public posts and videos.

On Hacker News

Regarded as the definitive, if heartbreaking, account of Terry Davis and TempleOS.

Recommended by 7 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2019–2022

Topics

Documentaries & storytelling Mental health & neurodiversity Operating systems & kernels

What people said

Rendello · 2021-12 · Strong recommendation
(Context, the late creator of the original TempleOS, Terry Davis, was very schizophrenic.) This video is the definitive rundown on his life and illness: [VIDEO] Terry Davis, in life and online, was completely wild. What's interesting though is that when you play in TempleOS for a little while, it's easy to forget that. The OS is religious and super idiosyncratic, but that nasty, manic, hateful, attitude isn't there (with few exceptions). And the code and docs are damn good. I think Terry tried hard to keep the actual OS and documentation "pure", in a way. I think digging in and working on extremely complex C code was a regulating force that calmed him, in the exact opposite way that being jeered at online (especially by 4Chan and the like) upset him and made his condition worse.
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sas41 · 2019-06 · Strong recommendation
Here is a great video on TempleOS and Terry Davis himself. It talks about the development of the OS, it's history and his life in a chronological order. [VIDEO]
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qzx_pierri · 2022-11 · Recommendation
TempleOS was an OS created by a genius programmer named Terry. Also, I very rarely use the word genius, but he was a genius by definition. He was extremely mentally ill, but his brilliance lives on through TempleOS (and HolyC). Check out this Down the Rabbit Hole video about him. [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Fredrik Knudsen, played through YouTube.

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