Johnicholas Hines

Projects
  • I implemented a tiny self-hosting interpreter (Torben AEgidius Mogensen invented it, and used it as a running example in his Inherited Limits paper - as far as I know, the language doesn't have a name.), first in req, and then again in Lua, and then again in Prolog.
  • Using ichbins, I wrote a generator that can parse a syntax tree and output it in three languages corresponding to three simple self-hosting compilers (otccelf, cc500, bcompiler). The biggest syntax tree I translated with it is a version of jar2.
  • A tool for manually solving job-shop scheduling problems. I hope that anyone who knows what job-shop scheduling is also knows how dumb it is to manually solve them.
  • This is a generator for a particular kind of template class, which I call the wiring idiom. The generator takes a syntax tree and outputs a class that represents that syntax tree. Using the wiring idiom pushes the classes being wired together to be more stateless and reusable.
  • In order to understand P'', I wrote a little simulator for it. It can do Bohm's decrement algorithm, but it's not particularly efficient, well-documented or pretty.
  • I transliterated a tiny functional program into Java's OO style, with mildly interesting results; it blew up enormously and all of the control flow vanished.
  • This is a doodle trying to figure out how that "select/poll-based user multithreading dataflow sockets thing" (which I've seen in a couple places, most notably sfs/sfslite) works.
  • My best tool generates all grammatical strings from a given context free grammar, in length order. It creates a unrank function from the grammar, so you can "skip ahead" in the sequence.
  • Humans (well, programmers) sometimes follow algorithms to solve problems. This tool does the bookkeeping involved in depth-first search for you. The bookkeeping involved in depth-first search is not that much, so it's not that useful, compared to a stack of index cards.
Some of my books. 

My journal. 

My (inactive) internet-dating profile.

I am active on LessWrong.

I use TiddlyWiki. This is my tiddlywiki as of 4/12/2011.


If you download something from my stuff and want to talk to me about it, do contact me. My email address is my first name at my first name dot com.

Hoping to prompt the master into a discussion,
Anton said "Master, I have heard that objects are a very good thing - is this true?"
Qc Na looked pityingly at his student and replied,
"Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's closures."

Chastised, Anton spent a year studying Barendregt, Cardelli and Pierce,
He learned much, and looked forward to informing his master of his progress.

On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master, saying
"Master, I have diligently studied the matter,
and now understand that objects are truly a poor man's closures."

Qc Na responded by hitting Anton with his stick, saying
"When will you learn?
Closures are a poor man's object."
At that moment, Anton became enlightened.