I know this isn't a humor website, but I'm seriously tempted to post the "but why?" meme. My personal mantra is that everything worth doing is difficult, but I've always had the perspective that this is not a symetric relationship.

This was certainly difficult for him to do, and the engineering aspects of it are "cool", but this doesn't solve an actual problem. With the same amount of effort he could have written new/better drivers for a raspberry-pi peripheral, or contributed to one of the open source OS projects in a meaningful way. Hell, if this he did this just for fun, then this is definitely the kind of guy who burns out well before they turn 40.

Efforts like this shouldn't be applauded or critically reviewed with advice to make it better, they should be discouraged. This kind of project is not merely a waste of time, if it were I would have no valid complaint to make. It is a waste of time that burns out a highly capable person, and too many people in the tech community are ready to applaud the effort.