Stuff I read last week

About: A collection of links and short commentary, published weekly. In theory the inclusion criteria are for it to be something I read last week (duh) and was either particularly interesting or something I might want to refer to later. Subscribe with RSS or see my main blog for long-form writing.

2017-09-11

Jonesforth A Forth interpreter written in assembly, with extensive comments explaining the data structures and the concepts behind threaded code.
Creating a language using only assembly language
How do you enjoy the process of creating a new language, when you've been writing compilers for a long time? By adding artificial restrictions. Only assembly; no libraries, programming languages, or code generators.

Implement a minimal BCPL-like language in assembly. Then use that to implement a Lisp interpreter, that interpreter to create a reasonably featured VM (e.g. garbage collector, delim. continuations). Write a compiler, assembler, disassembler, linker targeting the VM. Then use these tools to write the language you originally wanted with objects, pattern matching, and non-sexp macros.
JavaScript: The Curious Case of null >= 0 How the implicit type coercions in == and > are inconsistent, and create some very odd looking results.
Why Command And Vector Processors Rock > You see, the Amiga documented its command processor. The designers wanted you to write programs that ran on it. They wanted you to use it for doing all sorts of clever things. They recognized that the power to operate the underlying horsepower directly was something that could amplify the capabilities of a system way past the limits of its original design.

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