the-super-tiny-compiler VS Git

Now, those concepts are a whole entire world to explore, and this is out of the scope of this article. I suggest the reading of the Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the book Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom for a wider (but still practical) understanding of those subjects. Another practical great resource to look at is The SuperTiny Compiler. To explore them from a theorical point of view, you can find A LOT of resources from books or courses online.

The super tiny compiler by Jamie

I am currently writing a much more intricate version of the Super Tiny Compiler (https://github.com/jamiebuilds/the-super-tiny-compiler) in Rust, only I plan on handling many basic operations, essentially a compiler for a MUCH simpler version of Go. Great project idea btw, for anyone who wants to explore compilers. But in doing so, have really found a new respect for just what is going on when you gcc -o garbageprogram mytrashcode.c

Here, at least take this floatie: https://github.com/jamiebuilds/the-super-tiny-compiler

Outside of this, I recently learned about The Super Tiny Compiler which was a project written to be read. Mind you, it has a vast amount of comments, which may be more of a leg-up than you're asking for.

You could start here:

https://github.com/jamiebuilds/the-super-tiny-compiler

That converts from lisp-like to javascript. Really though this is a big field, and there are lots of resources out there.

To get started look at your input language; you'll need to lex and parse that. Then massage the parsed structure into the appropriate output.

You can see me convert brainfuck to C, or x86 assembly language here:

https://github.com/skx/bfcc

Boy, I can't find this either (but also, the kernel mailing list is _really_ difficult to search). I really remember Linus saying something like "it's not a real SCM, but maybe someone could build one on top of it someday" or something like that, but I cannot figure out how to find that.

You _can_ see, though, that in his first README, he refers to what he's building as not a "real SCM":

https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23...

Here is the direct link, as HN somehow removes the query string: https://github.com/git/git/commits?author=peff&since=2023-10...

I understand all that.

I'm saying, if you write a survey and one of the possible answers is "diff", but you don't clearly define what you mean by "diff", then don't be surprised if respondents use any reasonable definition that makes sense to them. Ask an ambiguous question, get a mishmash of answers.

The thing that Git uses for packfiles is called a "delta" by Git, but it's also reasonable to call it a "diff". After all, Git's delta algorithm is "greatly inspired by parts of LibXDiff from Davide Libenzi"[1]. Not LibXDelta but LibXDiff.

Yes, how Git stores blobs (using deltas) is orthogonal to how Git uses blobs. But while that orthogonality is useful for reasoning about Git, it's not wrong to think of a commit as the totality of what Git does, including that optimization. (Some people, when learning Git, stumble over the way it's described as storing full copies, think it's wasteful. For them to wrap their heads around Git, they have to understand that the optimization exists. Which makes sense because Git probably wouldn't be practical if it lacked that optimization.)

The reason I'm bringing all this up is, if you're trying to explain Git, which is what the original article is about, then it's very important to keep in mind that someone who is learning Git needs to know what you mean when you say "diff". Most people who already know Git would tend to gravitate toward the definition of "diff" that you're assuming (the thing that Git computes on the fly and never stores), but people who already know Git aren't the target audience when you're teaching Git.

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[1] https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/diff-delta.c

Didn't Git have a new default merge strategy, `ort` https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/RelNote... ?

Yes, but you are referring to standalone scripts, not functions defined within a Bash script.

Compare for example the following helper code used for git command completion inside Bash and inside PowerShell.

Bash: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/completion/gi...