Just another normal day at SFPC including Grey Code, Abstract Syntax Tree structures for building programming language interpretors, and some fun with shaders.

Coolest thing about Grey Code is that also form “a Hamiltonian cycle on a hypercube, where each bit is seen as one dimension” Wikipedia. A Hamiltonian cycle in a path through a graph or structure in which every vertex is visited exactly once and is a cycle. Hypercubes can be n-dimentional, such that an n-bit Grey Code is a cycle on an n-dimentional hypercube. In short, what looks like sequence can be expressed as a walk in space. And, that’s cool :).

The Abstract Syntax Trees came up yesterday in Ramsey’s class on “radical computer science” including creating programming languages as we’re getting closer to building our own languages. It was fun to play with the concepts working on the homework today. It plays into Martin’s guidance from last year that “any segment of code should be messy in only one way” by separating the parsing from the computation/execution/compiling.

Shaders just seem fun. Efficient! Visual! Math! I started playing with the examples at ShaderToy today, but this feels like the first step of a journey