OSDev.org

Hello. I am austanss, formerly known as rizxt. I would like to apologize.

I do not expect any of you to remember me particularly. A couple years ago I flooded these forums with low-effort, amateur-level posts asking for help with the myriad of issues I encountered while blindly developing an operating system. My effort was mostly wasted, as I largely did not possess the skills required to develop an operating system. The most prominent feature of my personality then was my arrogance. This arrogance was largely born in an effort to shield myself from doubt, as I knew deep down that I was not truly fit for the job, and was very defensive against wiser people on this forum who essentially demonstrated to me that I was floundering like a fish out of water. One crime I must attest for was my originally firm disposition against reading any actual manuals. Well, I should've listened the first time around, because I really don't even need to post here because the wiki and the manuals are perfectly adequate. I deeply apologize for the time wasted on the part of many diligent members of this forum.

With my acknowledgements behind me, I must note that I at no time acted in bad faith or malevolence against any member, or the forum as a whole, through any medium. I can summarize my failings as inadequacy, incompetence, immaturity, and arrogance. Despite these failings, I never acted in malevolence. I ignorantly inquired with a strong belief in blind perseverance. I did not allow myself to give up from operating system development, despite or in spite of the fact that I probably should've. However, I externalized the excessive burden of my perseverance onto others when ignorantly and arrogantly inquiring ad nauseam, whilst completely blowing off perfectly valid advice because of my ignorant belief that it was wrong, because I didn't want to hear it. To an extent, honestly, I often refused to read legitimate documentation that was recommended because my level of literacy was insufficient to properly comprehend the text. So, uh, sorry about that. I promise that I'm literate now.

Three and a half years ago, in October of 2020, I foolishly brought upon myself the task of contributing to a Discord friend's also vainly-sought operating system, at the time named Novix, with a kernel named NovaVita. The project is totally defunct now, and the only way you could reliably access some of its source code is by extrapolating through the commit logs of my original, also now defunct, operating system project (it was written in C++...) dubbed micron. For very embarrassing context, I started the project in October of 2020, whereas I had first started learning to write in desktop languages (C#) in February of 2020. So, there's me, reading the wiki recommending 10 years of prerequisite experience, whereas I'm hovering at 6 months. I was 13 years old, and had only recently started eighth grade. I mean really, what the hell was I thinking? It required unprecedented levels of arrogance to be able to convince myself that the task I was undertaking was child's play, and I didn't realize how annoying and wasteful of other people's time it was to spam a forum with low-quality, "too lazy to write this again" posts and then pretend that answers were supposed to be delivered to me on a silver platter. I really was poking around where I didn't belong.

At one point, I realized the nonsense and trash I was creating, in terms of my forum posts, and the operating system I was writing as well. I stopped foolishly writing it in C++ once I realized the ramifications in terms of unnecessary complexity and unorthodox methods that caused setbacks. I scrapped my C++ project, micron, in May of 2021, and started rewriting a better design in C and assembly, like a rational mind would. I was still very far from realizing my faults, but this transition set in motion the eventual realization of deficiency. The arrogance had been stepped down a level, but it was still present, and despite the fact that I did understand the whole time that I didn't know everything about operating system development, I also didn't know how much I didn't know, and how daunting of a task it would be to bridge the gap in knowledge.

I do not necessarily seek reconciliation or forgiveness, because I largely do not care much about the opinions of pseudonymous internet strangers. At the same time, I would like to bring myself to reflect upon my mistakes and how they can be improved. The forum's rules notes the possibility of future employers peeking at my forum activity here, and I realize that I need to offer some kind of clarification for my progression and resolution from there. I do not believe that I now suddenly know everything about operating system development. In fact, I understand now more than ever just how much is really out there for me to understand. My operating system pales in comparison to managarm or a hobbyist project of the like, even when accounting for my solo effort. I still occasionally make progress on it, but I have many other things in a more advanced stage of life to worry about, although I haven't abandoned it.

I do not expect anyone to have been waiting for this response. I do not expect anyone to really care about this response, have a comment on this response, or intend to start a conversation about this response. I do not need forgiveness because I expect to have been mostly forgotten, because I am not much different than the average incompetent amateurs that flood these forums. It's funny that my posts at one point painted me as an individual who believed that they were not an incompetent amateur. Yet, now I'm acknowledging it, and I can sleep better at night if this embarrassing thought pops into my mind.

You even just making an effort to put things right and apologize for your behavior puts you, at IIUC 17 years of age, head and shoulders above many of your peers. Even many of your seniors.

Your old profile has been deleted, so I cannot search for the posts you made, but I do not remember them being annoying more than the baseline. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders and the heart in the right place. Don't be discouraged by the follies of youth! Whatever you do now, I think you'll do just fine.

Have a beer, a slap on the back, and a heartfelt "we've all been there at one point or another".

Careful there, he's American, he can't drink for a few more years.

Well, since there's no way in hell I'd be going to the USA again, he'd have to come here to collect, and, well... there'd be no one stopping us.

For the record, this is the same profile with the same post history, I just updated my username to a different pseudonym.

Wow, what a nice move!

So I am reading this like : "In case any of my future co-workers or bosses stumbles across my profile and actually care to read my teenies braindumps, I better also add something rependish sinners confessionistical landmark, too"? Wow. You are 17 now and I would like to actually hear from your future self 25 years old "some post experience" expressions (how you think about your old texts and your then ask for apology and what then actually happend with people reading your posts, if any.)

I myself would think some future AI will have digsted all our "textual outpourings" and be able to behave like 13 ignorant arrogant lad

Thanks for posting. I remember you, as I was the one who directed you to this forum from Stackoverflow regarding a Multiboot question. During our SO chat I said this:I must admit it is refreshing to see your post. I can only say that you owe Octocontrabass a lot of praise and thanks because they were an absolute saint answering a lot of your posts here.

Good luck on your new OS.