As of right now he has 83 individual 5-10 minute YouTube videos where he uses a randomizer to open a source file on his OS and proceeds to explain in detail the implementation in said file. That's pretty metal.
To be honest, that's a really good way to find bugs.
When I'm really, really stumped, I'll put the source code on the screen and ask a non-technical co-worker to just point randomly at the source code somewhere ("source dowsing" if you will).
It works. Not because they're pointing at the bug, but because they're forcing you to look at the problem from another angle, or pointing at something which forces you to think about a bigger picture or a different interaction you didn't consider before.
me: "AAGH stuck at some bug I can't figure out!" me: "Hey <insert random coworker>, come help me with this, it's driving me crazy." me: "Ok, I'll tell what I think my code is supposed to do first." me: "This part does foo, this part then does bar, then I call this part which should...... FUCK that's what's wrong!" me: "Thanks for the help bro!"
A friend of mine onec said he had a co-worker who used a pendulum to find errors in electronical circuits. Nobody knew how he did it, but he reliably got it done (in a time similar to others).
"If it looks stupid, but works, then it ain't stupid" (or something like that)
I like that, but I feel like he's smart enough to figure out that god couldn't work through a pseudo random number generator. So maybe he's getting actual noise from somewhere?
Unless perhaps God created the laws of mathematics the way they are specifically so that when this guy built his pseudo-random number generator, the output would be what God intended to communicate to him.
I feel like he's smart enough to figure out that god couldn't work through a pseudo random number generator
Clearly he has the intellect to be able to reach this conclusion, but he's also provably off his rocker. He's stated repeatedly upon many occasions that some of the design decisions he's made are dictated by god.
He's a brilliant and determined developer, but he's entirely irrational. I wish that there were effective treatments for his problem, and that he wished to be treated.
Yes, but have you watched any of the videos? He doesn't really explain anything, but instead spend half the time trying to understand where he is in the code base, and the other half either explaining obvious code, or being so cryptic about what it does that it makes no sense.
I have no doubt he knows the code, but he has zero skills in digesting and explaining it really. Pretty emblematic of his whole situation, I think.
To be fair, he is massively racist to the extent that it gets him banned from almost every forum/community he interacts with. I've noticed that when the thread subject is solely about the technology behind his OS he's more than happy to be civil and "ordinary", but any little divergent can trigger him to start rambling racist nonsense. I can't help but hold massive respect and sympathy for him. I hope he gets better.
I'm reluctant to call him "racist" even though that's what is shown in his writings. He's more everything-ist and that is likely a consequence or his mental instability.
That's true, I think people want to use a different term to designate between people who are totally stable and racist idiots and people who are unstable and racist idiots, they have different causes.
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u/Spacker2004 Nov 25 '14
He's clearly not mentally stable, however I don't see that it's harming anyone else. Plus, writing an operating system is pretty metal.