Source
- URL: https://x.com/NOTimothyLottes/status/2099688997194711371
- Author: NOTimothyLottes (@NOTimothyLottes)
- Posted: 2026-09-15 02:37:21
Thread
1/ @NOTimothyLottes
Evening project - building a spiritual successor language to what could pass as a replacement for C64 boot BASIC boot but on a x86-64 machine …
2/ @NOTimothyLottes
Constraints
(1.) Must directly interpret from ascii txt
(2.) Must be tiny, core language fits in a few hundred bytes [fraction of I$]
(3.) Sticking with similar double character max string size for ‘variable’ name
(4.) But swapping BASIC for something FORTH like instead
3/ @NOTimothyLottes
I’m using 128-bytes for ascii reordering (so 0-F is 0-F, etc). Doing a byte[128] sized lookup for the interpreter which gets converted to a jump table for 7-bit characters. So each character is a branch, and likely some get predicted (like when using hex literals).
4/ @NOTimothyLottes
Yet this language is actually a serious effort, something trivial to understand, and powerful enough to use for system level scripting (doing syscalls) and function as a macro assembler for CPU+GPU code. Also something fast enough to be effectively free for iteration-time
5/ @NOTimothyLottes
I’ve got a crazy useful system for comments,
ThisPartIsIgnored_gg
The _ clears the string (prefix comment)
The ‘gg’ is the physical index to the dictionary entry
So it’s possible to comment all the abbreviations
6/ @NOTimothyLottes
Tooling is just writing it out in binary form.
I use https://defuse.ca/online-x86-assembler.htm#disassembly to grab disassembly bytes to write into a hex stream. And https://ref.x86asm.net/coder64.html for x86-64 opcode reference.
7/ @NOTimothyLottes
Probably going to merge this into my prior effort for a Linux self modifying binary, as it’s language. Then just need to build out the in-binary editor for a complete working dev platform for Linux x86-64 that fits in a few KiB.
8/ @NOTimothyLottes
The x86-64 self modifying binary shell with not the smallest ELF header is currently clocked in at 290 bytes. So yeah not joking, a full hardcore Linux dev env in a few KiB (language, editor, debugger).
9/ @NOTimothyLottes
The irony being this would be portable, no library support, everything in raw system calls. So will need to roll over my prior user-space AMD compute GPU driver as well.