[HN Gopher] ABC: A C compiler for printable x86
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       ABC: A C compiler for printable x86
        
       Author : djoldman
       Score  : 85 points
       Date   : 2023-01-13 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tom7.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tom7.org)
        
       | a_shovel wrote:
       | This is my favorite part of the paper:
       | 
       | > Now, for good reasons that I will explain later, this paper
       | must contain 8,224 repetitions of the string "~~Q(", another
       | weird flower. Please proceed to Page 3 to continue reading this
       | interesting paper.
       | 
       | > ~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q(~~Q([etc.]
       | 
       | It comes early enough that the paper hasn't given enough context
       | to figure out why it's there, so unless you already know, it's
       | just surreal and gives you a faint suspicion that the author is
       | crazy.
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | This is, to date, the hardest i have _ever_ seen someone work for
       | this particular meme joke.
        
         | UncleMeat wrote:
         | This is Tom's MO (and to a lesser extent a number of other
         | sigbovik contributors). Extremely detailed and hard work on
         | absolutely fundamentally silly problems. A true legend.
        
       | asalahli wrote:
       | In the accompanying video[0] at 7:36 mark, he goes to great
       | lengths to express (A or B) as (A and B) + (A xor B).
       | 
       | Can anybody explain why it can't simply be expressed as (A and B)
       | xor (A xor B)? What am I missing here?
       | 
       | 0. https://www.youtube.com/embed/LA_DrBwkiJA
        
       | djoldman wrote:
       | paper: http://tom7.org/abc/paper.pdf
        
         | raphlinus wrote:
         | Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317
         | 
         | My favorite line from the paper is "the popular and elegant X86
         | architecture". Very subtle humor, I suspect not many people get
         | it.
        
       | NextHendrix wrote:
       | Scrolling quickly through the .txt version of this paper on my
       | phone feels like a visual expression of the internet dial up
       | sound.
        
       | rmorey wrote:
       | Everything tom7 has made is golden, my personal favorite is "Elo
       | World": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA
        
       | eNV25 wrote:
       | sed -E 's/(.{160})/\1\n/g' paper.txt | less
        
       | UncleMeat wrote:
       | In my opinion, this is the coolest thing tom7 has ever done. It
       | _just barely_ works, relying on unexpected wrapping behavior for
       | the instruction pointer and a series of medium-sized jumps to
       | ever jump backwards, and a truly heinous mechanism for sending an
       | interrupt to exit the program.
       | 
       | The fact that the paper contains the compiler executable
       | (compiled by itself) is just amazing.
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | Nice to see someone's going through the tom7 back catalogue!
       | 
       | the compile-to-IRS-tax-forms one was a gem, too.
        
       | omgmajk wrote:
       | Tom7 is an absolute legend and I've seen this video and most of
       | his library many times.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-01-13 23:01 UTC)