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I write, therefore I am
Personal blog · iwriteiam.nl · on HN as fjfaaseprogrammingsecurity
I write, therefore I am is a personal blog at iwriteiam.nl about programming and security. Since 2008, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 97 times, most often “The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
97mentions?
17HN people?
2008–2026first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-11-16
- How to Crack a Binary File Format2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-29
- /Ha_bf_online.html2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-01-20
- Signature Programs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-02-04
- Reviewing live-bootstrap and reflections on trusting trust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-29
What Hacker News says?
Maybe, the should have used one of the many repeating Rule 30 patterns: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/Rule30.html
Comment linking /Rule30.html
on “Oh My Gosh, It’s Covered in Rule 30s”Submitted The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005) as a story · 102 points
HN discussionhttps://www.iwriteiam.nl
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on “I deleted my second brain”Submitted The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005) as a story · 84 points
HN discussionI tried writing some of my own verses for this song, but I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with RPLACA and CDADAADR. Speaking of consing every pair, here's a previous discussion about "The Origin of CAR and CDR in Lisp (2005) (iwriteiam.nl)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16008239 http://www.iwriteiam.nl/HaCAR_CDR.html
Comment linking /HaCAR_CDR.html
on “I’ve Consed Every Pair”Submitted Frank Herbert's seventh Dune novel (2005) as a story · 32 points
HN discussionEarlier this year, I wrote a blog titled 'A simple Git workflow' https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D2009.html#30 and now that I am rereading it, it does not feel simple at all for a first time user. And note, this simple workflow does not even use branches. It was only recently that I found the two global settings that makes lives for first time users so much easier. Why not make them default?
Comment linking /D2009.html
on “Git is too hard”Submitted Signature Programs as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWith a Yacc-like parser, it is indeed hard to define what the AST should be, but because AST generation is most of the time rather straightforward, you could automate it, by simply specifying some string at the end of a rule and have a generic mechanism for dealing with the option, plus and star-operators. For an example of such a grammar for C have a look at: https://www.iwriteiam.nl/c_gr.txt and for a parser which…
Comment linking /MM.html
on “C Compiler from Scratch”Submitted Signature programs as a story · 8 points
HN discussionIf it is any consolation, Steve Russell, who implemented the first Lisp interpreter on the IBM 704 and came up with CAR (Contents of the Address Register) and CDR (Contents of the Decrement Register) wanted to change them to "first" and "rest" after a few months in to teaching and thinking "Hmm, maybe we could have had more direct names here". See the full email from Steve Russell on the topic on this page https://w…
Comment linking /HaCAR_CDR.html
on “Alonzo Church: Architect of computer intelligence”Submitted How to crack a Binary File Format as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of my own attempts to read Acorn Atom programs from cassette tapes. I wrote a program to process wave files. Took me quite long to find a reliable method for recognizing the zero's and one's. But even that was not perfect and required some manual editing. For more details, see: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/D0301.html#20
Comment linking /D0301.html
on “Recovering “lost” treasure-filled floppy discs with an oscilloscope”Submitted Programming the Gigatron as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor more than 25 years, I am simply writing HTML with only a little CSS and some JavaScript. During that time, I have developed a link checking program, which helps me fixing links and updating the tags. It is a simple C program and rather specific for my needs: https://www.iwriteiam.nl/chkhtml_c.txt It also moves all files that need to be updated to an ftp folder for easy uploading to my hoster.
Comment linking /chkhtml_c.txt
on “ I Built My Own Shitty Static Site Generator”Submitted How to Crack a Binary File Format as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI had a quick look at these instagram links and except for the last two, they do not feel like 'Art', just like most novels are not considered literature. In the past years, I have visited a lot of art exhibitions (at museums and art galleries) and graduation shows of art schools here in the Netherlands. See: https://iwriteiam.nl/Exhibitions.html Even at those, I feel that a lot is crap, too conceptual. But there al…
Comment linking /Exhibitions.html
on “The Storm Hits the Art Market”Submitted Reviewing live-bootstrap and reflections on trusting trust as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSolving a sudoku is just an exact cover problem, for which there already exist solvers. Just write a simple transformation program and you are done. https://www.iwriteiam.nl/D1009.html#9
Comment linking /D1009.html
on “The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer”I have used the goto statement to implement enumerators classes in C++ using a state member and a switch statement with goto statements at the start of the method. Of course, also all local (loop) variables need to be replaced by (private) members. At each 'yield' location, you set the state variable, have a return statement, followed by a label. It is also possible to do this in C with functions and structs. See fo…
Comment linking /Ha_cmt.html
on “Goto (2007)”I have been doing this for more this for 24 years now. Even developed my own editor (based on the Crystal Edit controls), which has navigation. Pressing F5 on a link, will open the file (when it is local) at the given location (following anchors) or send it to the default browser (when it is external). It has syntax highlighting with checks on matching tags and inline JavaScript. See: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/MySampl…
Comment linking /MySample.html
on “Writing HTML in HTML”In 1995, I started with a personal website based on HTML. Since then, I have added a little bit of CSS to the home page, but all the other files are in plain HTML. For that reason it looks very old school, but that is okay with me. I have been adding some JavaScript through the years. Some for generating content, some for graphics and animations. I also have written a C program for checking the HTML and all the inte…
Comment linking /SiteMain.html
on “Rewriting my website in plain HTML and CSS”I followed research into medications for Alzheimer disease after my late wife was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimers Disease in 2006. Please have a look at the list of publications I have collected, including reports of promissing findings, most of which, to my knowledge, have not lead to any cure of the disease. https://www.iwriteiam.nl/AlzheimersDisease.html Search for 'mice'.
Comment linking /AlzheimersDisease.html
on “Experimental drug reverses age-related memory and cognitive decline in mice”In 1996, I took a second hand Toshiba T1000 with me on our trip to China. I remember using Qedit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor#Qedit to edit my website and to read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. See: https://www.iwriteiam.nl/Computers.html#T1000 for more details.
Comment linking /Computers.html
on “Toshiba T1100 – the laptop that was named a milestone of electronic engineering”I personally think it is a little overkill to use Prolog to solve sudokus, as there is a simple mapping of sudokus to exact covers. The resulting exact covers are rather small and can usually be solved within a fraction of a second using Knuth's Algorithm X, even for hard sudokus. http://www.iwriteiam.nl/D1009.html#9
Comment linking /D1009.html
on “Solving Sudoku with Prolog (2016)”Always nice to hear of people who have been blogging for a long time. I myself have been blogging (not always very seriously) for more than 29 years. First from a '~/home' directory of the University I was working at, later I moved to my own domain [1]. The first entry is from February 1995, but it also has contents from before that date. I am still writing HTML (with some JavaScript) using a modified version of Cry…
Comment linking /chkhtml_c.txt
on “20 Years of Blogging on my own website”I have implemented the method of parsing an expression into objects with an evaluation method in the scripting language that I build into an editor for performing complex manipulations of images. See http://www.iwriteiam.nl/MySample.html
Comment linking /MySample.html
on “Compilers for Free”Indeed, there is a problem with local variables. The example relies on using global variables. If you want multiple threads executing the same function, it is not going to work. Also there is no solution for calling other functions (and have them switch in the middle). A long time ago, I worked on an implementation that does not have these limitations. See: http://www.iwriteiam.nl/Ha_cmt.html
Comment linking /Ha_cmt.html
on “Protothreads: Lightweight Stackless Threads in C”Location: Enschede, The Netherlands Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: C++, C#, JavaScript Résumé/CV: http://iwriteiam.nl/CVFransFaaseEn.pdf Email: https://www.iwriteiam.nl/index.html#email Senior software engineer with about 35 years of experience. Some years experience with being product owner. I am interested in reverse engineering, parsing, algorithms and mechatronics.
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on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2024)”I noticed that too, but Steve Russell wrote the first LISP interpreter on the IBM 704 in 1959 ( http://www.iwriteiam.nl/HaCAR_CDR.html#Steve ). The IBM 7094 came out in 1962 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7090 ). So I'm betting that our russell isn't Steve. He's a perfectly good russell nonetheless :)
Comment linking /HaCAR_CDR.html
on “Men Walk On Moon - July 20th 1969”
