Rome wasn't built in a day and it wasn't built alone. IMO the best programmers are the ones that can build a community around a shared vision. By this metric, Andreas Kling has done an incredible job with the Serenity project. Although he's a certainly a good programmer, I believe the project succeeded because of his EQ and general kindness. Too many brilliant programmers are lacking in that department.
You can be a brilliant programmer, but there's zero hope of building anything like Serenity as a one man band.
Because I was curious "why", I searched and found this[0] which doesn't sound all that different from the OP examples.
Why create SerenityOS?
When I asked Kling why he decided to write an operating system entirely from scratch, he had two answers. The first, pragmatic answer was he wanted a daily driver operating system for himself, by himself. Other users and developers were welcome, but—initially—they were largely showing up for the ride.
The second answer is that SerenityOS started as a personal therapy project. Kling is a recovering addict, and he decided to build an operating system as a long-term project to focus his mind and occupy his time, similar to the way someone else might decide to build a car or house.
Although Kling still considers SerenityOS to be his eventual daily driver, he's expanded the scope of "who it's for" from "me" to "us"—where "us" includes all the people who have shown up, taken a liking to the project, and decided to pitch in.
Comments
Rome wasn't built in a day and it wasn't built alone. IMO the best programmers are the ones that can build a community around a shared vision. By this metric, Andreas Kling has done an incredible job with the Serenity project. Although he's a certainly a good programmer, I believe the project succeeded because of his EQ and general kindness. Too many brilliant programmers are lacking in that department.
You can be a brilliant programmer, but there's zero hope of building anything like Serenity as a one man band.
Because I was curious "why", I searched and found this[0] which doesn't sound all that different from the OP examples.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/not-a-linux-distro-r...