Why not have controls in your program to do these immediate, non-logic changing modifications? It can report the ideal value through a debug interface. No recompiles needed.
I'd also recommend getting used to serialisation/deserialisation. Serde for Rust makes this remarkably easy. Writing every setting to a file is simple if the compiler can do it for you, rather than you walking the long way around.
Assuming you can learn anything from the experience. What you might learn is weird idiosyncrasies and futile tactics playing from desperation. You might learn to not lose so quickly, but that's not the same as winning.
Do you feel it's likely that he's created something that works and rather than using or elaborating upon his work, and thus bettering their own career, everyone has thought, "Wait a second, isn't this the Palm Pilot guy?" and discarded the idea?
Instead of just cutting out the middle bit of getting a PhD, becoming a professor, setting up a research lab, and mentoring students for decades, and leaping straight to "make a startup from an idea that works", every single person decided to go the hard road because it seems proper?
Your cargo cult idea works - he's arranged all the trappings of being an influential theorist - funding and research labs and media coverage - except perhaps for the one thing that lets him fly: a worthwhile idea.