Terry A Davis Died

[seta-san]

Schizophrenic Programmer of Temple OS and basically the whole backend of ticketmaster.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

Quote

Davis was controversial for his regular use of racist and homophobic slurs,[1][4] sometimes rebuking his critics as "######".[1] However, the critical reception to TempleOS was mostly favorable, as tech journalist David Cassel wrote, "programming websites tried to find the necessary patience and understanding to accommodate Davis".[4] TechRepublic and OS News published positive articles on Davis' work, even though Davis was banned from the latter for hostile comments targeting its readers and staff.[4] He frequently communicated in randomly-generated blocks of text and off-topic declarations about God, which led to other bans from Something Awful, Reddit, and Hacker News.[1]

Once TempleOS was released, most of Davis' time was spent "coding, web surfing, or using the output from the National Institute of Standards and Technology randomness beacon to talk to God".[1] He posted hours of video blogs to social media,[2] referring to himself as "the smartest programmer that's ever lived",[4] and attracted a small online following.[2][4] One fan described him as a "programming legend", while another, a computer engineer, compared the development of TempleOS to a one-man-built skyscraper.[2] He was "always lucid" talking with fans if the subject was about computers.[4] In 2017, the OS was shown as a part of an outsider art exhibition in Bourogne, France.[10]

During his final years, Davis struggled with periods of homelessness and brief jailtime. He stopped taking medication because he believed it limited his creativity. Some fans helped him by bringing him supplies, but he refused their housing offers.[4] On the evening of August 11, 2018, while walking alongside railroad tracks in The Dalles, Oregon, he was struck from the back and killed by a Union Pacific train. Investigators could not determine if his death was suicide or accidental.[2] In his final video, recorded and uploaded hours before his death, he explained that he had recently removed most of his videos because did not wish to "litter" the Internet. As reports of his death surfaced online, he was memorialized by fans in a number of tributes posted to social media.[4]

warning: obscene and racist language in video

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

I read about this a month ago.  Clearly a very intelligent individual, yet also very troubled.  I doubt there are many people these days capable of developing a whole operating system from scratch like he did.  It sounded eminently suitable for embedded systems and the like.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky