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37 points2 hoursgithub.com

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/

bangaladore2 hours ago

Reminds me of movfuscator [1]. This can compile programs to movs and only movs.

[1] https://github.com/Battelle/movfuscator

tromp1 hour ago

Am I right in deducing that this language gets its power from self-modifying code? I.e. flipping bits within addresses of the opcodes of the running program?

tomhee55 minutes ago

You are indeed right

tromp45 minutes ago

I would have expected the language documentation to focus more on this observation and to explain for instance how self modification is used to implement while loops. But I don't even see the term mentioned anywhere?!

tomhee40 minutes ago

Good point! It's mentioned in the github wiki here: https://github.com/tomhea/flip-jump/wiki/Learn-FlipJump#memo...

It was once in the Readme but as I kept developing it more it become longer and longer, so I moved it into the wiki, and especially to here: https://esolangs.org/wiki/FlipJump

tomhee47 minutes ago

By the way, as a challenge, try how you can program an "If" statement in Flipjump.

artemonster31 minutes ago

Id appreciate more explanations from the power of combined bitflip & goto

dlcarrier42 minutes ago

Maxim (now owned by Analog) actually manufactures a single-instruction processor series, called MAXQ. It uses a single move instruction, with a flag for literals, and a transport triggered architecture.

tomhee2 hours ago

There is also a brainfuck to flipjump compiler: https://github.com/tomhea/bf2fj

platz1 hour ago

How is a jump realized by Not Gates?

tomhee48 minutes ago

I dont think that the jump can be realized by NOT gates, but it's essentially "where to find the next NOT command". The jump is indeed a crucial part of the language, as it allows going back, and especially to make self-modifying code.

Jerrrry49 minutes ago

I'm guessing by not jumping into a terminating/ halting NOOP.

The logic is within the branching.

dang2 hours ago

Looks like we banned you and this domain because of the egregious vote manipulation and bogus comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34856792.

That was a long time ago, though, and the project is interesting enough, so I'm going to assume you've learned your lesson and unban you. Please stop using multiple accounts for this though!

tomhee2 hours ago

Thanks man, I appreciate it.

jimbob452 hours ago

Dang, I have to know what triggered you to say this. It’s not the same user account so you would have had to have recognized the URL and written based on that.

Do you keep notes on each astroturfed submission and auto-trigger reposts to notify yourself? Or did you just happen to recognize this? 20 minutes from his post to your comment is absurdly good moderation.

dang2 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42742462 was on the front page. We got an email suggesting that the URL should be https://github.com/tomhea/c2fj instead of https://github.com/tomhea/flip-jump. That made sense, except it turned out that github.com/tomhea was banned. That seemed odd because we don't normally ban github domains, so I looked at the history https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com%2Ftomhea (most of which will only be visible to users who have 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile), and it was pretty easy to see that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34856792 was, let's call it, the original sin in this chain of woe. It was also pretty obvious that the other submitting accounts were all related. Since the project itself is interesting I figured the best thing to do was give the submitter a second chance, so I picked the earlier post from today (the OP) and swapped it out for the other one (42742462).

I hope that answers your question!

chicken_grease2 hours ago

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