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Show HN: Compile C to Not Gates

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145 points tomhee | 2 comments | 17 Jan 25 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source

Hi! I've been working on the flipjump project, a programming language with 1 opcode: flip (invert) a bit, then jump (unconditionally). So a bit-flip followed by more bit-flips. It's effectively a bunch of NOT gates. This language, as poor as it sounds, is RICH.

Today I completed my compiler from C to FlipJump. It takes C files, and compiles them into flipjump. I finished testing it all today, and it works! My key interest in this project is to stretch what we know of computing and to prove that anything can be done even with minimal power.

I appreciate you reading my announcement, and be happy to answer questions.

More links:

- The flipjump language: https://github.com/tomhea/flip-jump https://esolangs.org/wiki/FlipJump

- c2fj python package https://pypi.org/project/c2fj/

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tomhee ◴[17 Jan 25 21:17 UTC] No.42743342[source]▶
By the way, as a challenge, try how you can program an "If" statement in Flipjump.
replies(2): >>42748003 #>>42795937 #
1. greenbit ◴[18 Jan 25 12:57 UTC] No.42748003[source]▶
I wondered this as well.

Thinking about it, if all you have is "invert some (N>1?) bits somewhere and jump to somewhere" .. I could see maybe it might work if you use self modifying code and there's really a 2nd instruction that is a no-op? Seems like it might work more like a cellular automata?

Of course, one could just go look at the documentation, but where's the fun in that?

replies(1): >>42755149 #
2. int_19h ◴[19 Jan 25 08:39 UTC] No.42755149[source]▶
You don't need a no-op; you can always just flip a bit you don't care about (e.g. reserve a word just for that) and then jump to next instruction.