The Mythical 10x Programmer: A Tribute to Terry A. Davis and Low-Level Genius
Description
The image features a photo of Terry A. Davis, creator of TempleOS, sitting in what appears to be a vehicle at night, looking intently at the camera. He is wearing a black hoodie and a backward baseball cap. Overlaid on the image is a screenshot of a text comment from a user named 'labrador'. The comment describes two legendary, eccentric programmers. One, at Microsoft, worked in a dark office illuminated only by a picture of Jesus. The other disappeared for 10 days and returned with 10,000 lines of flawless 68000 assembly code that cleverly used registers instead of the stack for parameters. The photo itself has a timestamp '10 15 2017' in the bottom right corner. This meme touches upon the 'mythical programmer' archetype, often called the '10x engineer' - a brilliant but eccentric individual who is extraordinarily productive. The story in the comment celebrates deep, low-level programming skills (68000 assembly, register manipulation), a craft that is less common in modern high-level development. The image of Terry A. Davis is poignant because he embodied this archetype to an extreme; he was a gifted programmer who created an entire operating system by himself, driven by religious conviction. For senior developers, this meme is a nod to the legendary figures in computing history and the awe inspired by true mastery of the machine
Comments
26Comment deleted
Modern dev onboarding: 'Here's your MacBook, 50-page security doc, and a Jira ticket.' Legendary dev onboarding: 'He disappeared for two weeks and returned with a new kernel written entirely in assembly. We don't ask questions.'
Code review was cancelled - once he used all 16 m68k registers for arg-passing it officially became an ABI, and you don’t critique scripture
The only developer who can disappear for 10 days and return with 10,000 lines of assembly that actually works is the same one who's been optimizing register allocation since before your compiler was born - and yes, they still use vi in a dark room lit only by the glow of their CRT monitor
Ah yes, the legendary 68000 assembly wizard who returned from his 10-day vision quest with 10,000 lines of register-juggling perfection. He looked at the stack, looked at those 16 beautiful 32-bit registers, and thought 'why use the stack when you can turn your calling convention into a game of register Tetris?' The fact that it actually worked flawlessly is both a testament to his mastery and a warning to future maintainers: sometimes the most terrifying code isn't the broken kind - it's the kind that works perfectly but makes you question everything you thought you knew about software architecture
Rewriting the calling convention to use all 16 m68k registers is great - until someone asks for a stack trace or a code review and you realize the optimization shipped with a BusFactor of one
16kLOC C++ for while(1): the senior dev's path to nirvana, one stack frame closer to segfault salvation
Disappears for 10 days, ships 10k lines of 68k asm with every parameter in a register - throughput: amazing; bus factor: 1; code review: 'LGTM, I'm not negotiating with that ABI.'
Ave cristus rex Comment deleted
I guess thats why some features don’t work on WoA yet. Comment deleted
one of the greats 🙏 Comment deleted
Unfortunately Terry's TempleOS is not licensed under GPL v3.0 (or any license) Comment deleted
I didn't understand it. Is there any context? Comment deleted
why are the craziest people the best developers Comment deleted
Why would you expect the best developers to be normal? Comment deleted
why not? Comment deleted
How long have you been programming for? Comment deleted
10 years Comment deleted
And after 10 years you're still doing this. Do you consider yourself normal? :] Comment deleted
more or less Comment deleted
Normal is not normal. ))) Comment deleted
Some programmers may believe that their Normal.dot is the same as the original one that is used by other people, however it may have been altered heavily through time, bearing little similarity with initial setup. Comment deleted
You're right that we'd have to first define normal. Because nobody is actually normal. Or at least average. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbiveCNBOxk But second we'd have to show our definition has a predictive power. Because neural networks, including those encased in cranium, are really good at pattern recognition. And then post-hoc rationalizing that the patterns that we have spotted actually have meaning. So it would be super easy to go through the list of "best developers" and pick out the outstanding traits and call that a rule, regardless of whether it'll actually work. Also that's prone to moving goalpost / no true Scotsman. Comment deleted
you can call yourself a normal man if you somewhere in between of -1σ and 1σ 😁 Comment deleted
they need some flaws to even it out Comment deleted
Should I actually hazard a guess then it's because you won't be able to make great software by being conformist / conformant. When you said "best programmers" you likely mean someone you've heard of because of what they wrote. Software projects are notoriously "on budget, on time, good; pick any two". And you know which one will virtually any management sacrifice. You will not be writing amazing software by following "industry standard" practices. Comment deleted
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40182314#40182486 Comment deleted