Rip Terry Davis 1969 - 2018

This intro was compiled from “Gods lonely programmer” by Jesse Hicks on Motherboard, and TempleOS’s Wikipedia page. I claim none of this writing as my own, except the occasional edits and commentary.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-lonely-programmer

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

Terrence Andrew Davis (December 15, 1969 – August 11, 2018) was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, later moving to Washington, Michigan, California, and Arizona. He was the seventh of eight children and his father was an industrial engineer. As a child, Davis owned an Apple II, and subsequently learned assembly language on a Commodore 64. He earned a masters degree in electric engineering from Arizona State University and worked for several years at TicketMaster as a programmer for the company's VAX operating system. In 1996, Davis began experiencing regular manic episodes, leading him to numerous stays at mental hospitals. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared schizophrenic and remained unemployed for the rest of his life. 

According to Terry, God told him to build his third holy temple in the form of an Operating System. Terry worked on it from 2007-2017, releasing it in 2013.

According to Terry, t is "God's official temple. Just like Solomon's temple, this is a community focal point where offerings are made and God's oracle is consulted." God also told Davis that 640x480, 16-color graphics "is a covenant like circumcision," making it easier for children to make drawings for God. God demands a perfect temple, and Davis says, "For ten years, I worked on programming TempleOS, full time. I finished, basically, and the last year has been tiny touch-ups here and there."

Davis became popular online through his bizarre live streams and tweets, and through how impressive his system was, considering he programmed it from scratch.  

Davis was controversial for his regular use of racist and homophobic slurs, sometimes rebuking his critics as "niggers".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". 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. 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.

During his final years, Davis struggled with periods of homelessness and brief jail time. 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. 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. 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.