C
@blakeyrat said in TempleOS and HolyC (Again. I think there's already a thread. Oh well.):
That all said, I agree with a lot of the points in the article, some of the stuff in TempleOS is actually really slick.
I certainly agree that there are some good concepts there, although most of the practical ones have been addressed in the latest versions of various IDEs (although probably a lot slower), but I'm willing to accept that to have a display resolution larger than 640x480, and window titles that don't scroll incessantly driving those of us who are still sane, slowly towards his version of sanity.
VS2019 does allow you to save diagrams as part of the project / solution, just not put them in the same file. Personally, I think this is a good thing, as having some embedded image in the source file (even if it were stored as text in SVG or something) and diff tools were updated to support it is just an unnecessary conflation of concerns IMHO.
Plus, just like coders who are overzealous with comments during early development, when there's no pressure and tonnes of budget, who write elegant and authoritative prose that quickly become outdated and confusing as changing requirements and tight deadlines cause the actual functionality to quickly deviate from that comment, over time they add no real value, except where describing something obscure, which is not immediately obvious from simply reading the code.
VS2019's diagrams which are automatically derived from the actual source code have proven to be far more useful to me, as they are at least always accurate, and provide a good starting point to understand a newly inherited code-base.
C# and even Java have had attributes for a long time which can be used for declarative programming, and are extensible, allowing you to build your own metadata systems if you like the declarative programming style.
Furthermore, Code Completion, even for dynamic languages (like JS) as well as HTML + Stylesheets has also come a long way lately.
It raises an interesting challenge for other OSs – why do shells have to be pure text? Why can’t we have a multimedia shell?
I think it's called a desktop environment... But I do understand what you really mean...
However what would it's practical use case be? Curses apps have been around for longer than I've been alive, and for proficient users of them, are extremely productive.
The issue however is becoming a moot point, as just about every new app being developed today is either a Web, or Mobile App. Fortunately, with SPA frameworks like React, Angular and Vue, you no longer have the productivity issues previously associated with traditional Web Applications.
So whilst these are great ideas, the vast majority of them have already been implemented, but for one guy, working alone, he was quite ahead of his time in many ways.
I really do feel sorry for him, in that he's obviously a talented engineer, who's mental illness has kept him from contributing to our industry in some really meaningful ways. It's actually really sad to read his full story.
Update: I looked up Terry A. Davis, and found that he died in 2018. Truly a sad story of a guy who clearly had severe mental illness that was not properly cared for. Whilst there is a lot to mock in his work, writing a 64bit SMP OS by yourself is no easy feat, even it shows signs of his madness. I just don't feel right about making fun of someone in his position. RIP
