It's the association. Things vary in value to us depending the brand it portrays. This is why people pay $150 for Nike shoes despite them being made by the same kids in the same sweatshop as the $10 Primark runners.
It's also why initiatives like ReiserFS died after its creator turned out to be a murderer.
As humans we're always looking for things that align with our values and "tribe". Maybe it shouldn't be that way and we should judge each product purely on its merits but for most of us it's just how we are.
People still use Eric Gill's fonts (sexually abused his kids), they put on plays by Oscar Wilde (who was definitely a sex tourist and the descriptions in letters makes it fairly clear the boys were underage), several murderers are admired for their works: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170517-can-you-separat...
I would not want to work with this guy, but using his code is not the same. I suspect if ReiserFs had been more successful it would have been forked rather than died after the murder conviction.
THis guy also sounds like he has severe mental health problems or is trolling: "I am physically the most disgusting form of existence that ever lived, I am so ugly people vomit when they merely see me. I can't even buy a prostitute no matter how much I would pay."
Yeah I really doubt the "can't get a prostitute" thing. And I really would recommend him to get one tbh. Not having had sex well into your 20s takes a toll on most guys' confidence and becomes something you look up to too much. Just doing it that way takes the pressure off and make you realise it's not the huge thing you thought it was. Been there and done that :)
IMO there's nothing bad about seeing one. People make sex out to be a bigger thing than it is. Most of the sex workers I know also enjoy the work.
Reading a bit their LRS wiki made me think that it's another case of a perhaps very good programmer but with some kind of mental disorder, which certainly modify how I would approach their software (trustworthiness, long term evolution and support...).
Not only that, but also hating on memory safety (for no reason at all) is just dumb. Most of his software is just simple projects, except maybe this, it's definitely not something I'd use in my day to day life.
My opinion on him is the same as my opinion on Terry Davis (if he would contribute to Linux (or other FOSS projects, instead of making his own useless TempleOS), he would leave a way better legacy)
I agree with your sentiment - and I apologize, I've since revised my comment.
Hating on memory safety as a concept is pretty cognitively dissonant for a programmer (and in this case [& many others], cognitive dissonance is a sign of some underlying mental illness). Memory safety is something a programmer should strive to achieve 100%.
Not only that, but static typing is absolutely unrelated to memory safety. (How can you even compare these two concepts???)
Depends on the use case, while you care about it when writing software for use on modern systems, low level programming on something where you can have unrestricted access to, for example, all of its 1024 bytes of address space at once can be fun too
But of course appreciating this doesn't equal "hating memory safety"
He's conflating memory safety with languages that provide memory safety (by which I think he means Rust, as that's another thing listed in his "disliked" things list) - that's what I feel is the dumbest about this. For me, this seems like the most of his code is riddled with use-after-free, double-free, not freeing etc. bugs. He may be intelligent, but if his intelligence goes to no use (besides making random C side projects..), it is not worth it. Also he claims he was a member of Mensa, no comment on that one.
Why is that important? The guy surely has controversial opinions but you’re not supporting them by importing his rasteriser, is it?