akkartik/mu on Hacker News

Related: https://github.com/akkartik/mu https://akkartik.name/akkartik-convivial-20200607.pdf

comment by peter_d_sherman · 2026-10-01 · in SubX (x86 Subset) Opcodes

…that builds up from raw machine code (guided tour[2]; paper '20[3]; talk '20[4]; sample app[5]) [1] https://github.com/akkartik/mu [2] tour https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/tutorial/index.md [3] paper…

comment by mncharity · 2026-09-30 · in Halfspace experimental IDE for solid modeling with distance fields

…built with it. Here's my similar project from a few years ago, in case you want to compare notes: https://github.com/akkartik/mu https://akkartik.name/akkartik-convivial-20200607.pdf

comment by akkartik · 2026-03-15 · in Show HN: GDSL – 800 line kernel: Lisp subset in 500, C subset in 1300

…I've made, I'm curious what you think of them: https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/108766067153506592 https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/html/20210624-shell...

comment by akkartik · 2025-08-04 · in Customizing tmux

You should definitely look at: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/subx.md

comment by eterps · 2024-09-23 · in Compiling to Assembly from Scratch

Me too! https://github.com/akkartik/mu https://github.com/akkartik/mu1 https://akkartik.name/post/tracing-tests

comment by akkartik · 2024-08-05 · in How I Program in 2024

…I had a way to take a single ELF binary created by my computing stack built up from machine code ( https://github.com/akkartik/mu ) and package it up with just a linux kernel and syslinux (whatever _that_ is) to create a bootable disk…

comment by akkartik · 2024-02-01 · in Damn Small Linux 2024

…) or testing against real hardware. For example, I'm kinda at an impasse with https://github.com/akkartik/mu/issues/52 and would really appreciate some advice from an expert.

comment by akkartik · 2024-01-14 · in Terse: A language with hi-level look-and-feel, low-level control (1995) [pdf]

…interesting, not sure about its current status as I haven't seen Mu or Akkartik on HN for a while. https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by speps · 2024-01-14 · in Terse: A language with hi-level look-and-feel, low-level control (1995) [pdf]

This was the thinking behind my https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2023-12-25 · in x86-64 Assembly Language Programming with Ubuntu (2022)

…apps for making better software. He also has a lovely VM called mu that's worth checking out: [3] https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by surprisetalk · 2023-11-24 · in Show HN: Lua Carousel, create little programs on desktop or mobile devices

…the kind of people I build for: http://akkartik.name/about http://akkartik.name/post/roundup22 https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2023-01-14 · in Ask HN: Why arent developers interested in secure coding?

Thank you! Yes, uxn is cool. I seem to gravitate towards systems with more memory: https://github.com/akkartik/mu https://love2d.org (e.g. http://akkartik.name/lines.html )

comment by akkartik · 2022-10-02 · in Show HN: FocusedEdit – a classic Macintosh to web browser shared text editor

Yes thank you, I was indeed alluding to https://github.com/akkartik/mu . Perhaps a more precise term would be "software stack".

comment by akkartik · 2022-06-06 · in Plain text, with lines

…cognitive load and productivity. Inferno predates most of the languages on your list. My computer ( https://github.com/akkartik/mu ) uses custom languages because I was able to design them to minimize total LoC, and to ensure the…

comment by akkartik · 2022-03-17 · in Inferno: A small operating system for building crossplatform distributed systems

You joke, but.. https://github.com/akkartik/mu/tree/main/shell

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-23 · in Llisp: Lisp in Lisp

…of people . It's certainly reasonable to consider my projects toy. I consider them research: * https://github.com/akkartik/mu * https://github.com/akkartik/teliva "The idea that projects should take source copies instead of library…

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-22 · in Ten years against division of labor in software

…https://sandstorm.io got a lot right. I wish they'd paid more attention to upgrade burdens. [1] https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-22 · in My self-hosting infrastructure, fully automated

I'm very interested in the network stack, having explored it for a while for https://github.com/akkartik/mu before giving up. What sort of network card do you support?

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-16 · in Show HN: My 486 Server

This was my attempt at providing easy graphics to kids inspired by the BBC Micro: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/tree/main/shell Here's a 6-minute demo: https://archive.org/details/akkartik-mu-2021-06-09 Requires Qemu, though. And no sound…

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-09 · in Simplicity of IRC

…explicitly assume tests unlike earlier systems I was dissatisfied with. Check out all the tests in https://github.com/akkartik/mu/tree/main/linux/bootstrap . For example, https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/linux/bootstrap/013...

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-09 · in Literate programming: Knuth is doing it wrong (2014)

…to level without concrete evidence. Similarly, I'd be extremely interested in outdated comments in https://github.com/akkartik/mu/tree/main/linux/bootstrap which is written in the LP style I described in OP. I consider outdated comments to…

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-09 · in Literate programming: Knuth is doing it wrong (2014)

…largely see eye to eye. I love LP! I still use it. Here's an x86 VM I maintained for several years: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/tree/main/linux/bootstrap . This (old) essay is merely thoughts on _how_ to do LP. We have some disagreement…

comment by akkartik · 2022-01-09 · in Literate programming: Knuth is doing it wrong (2014)

…in playing with Mu, there's a guided tour where I try to make the process as painless as possible: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/tutorial/index.md

comment by akkartik · 2021-12-08 · in Mu: A Human-Scale Computer

…many design choices. And memory-safe code as far as possible; no C anywhere in its dependencies. https://github.com/akkartik/mu Teliva is basically providing better networking and disk support by compromising on the memory safety. (I'm…

comment by akkartik · 2021-11-15 · in Teliva – an environment for end-user programming

Author here. I assume you're referring to https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/shell/evaluate.mu ? It's hard for me to tell, since there's 819k lines of code in Mu according to find . -type f | grep -v '\.git' | xargs wc -l. Does it…

comment by jart · 2021-10-30 · in Show HN: SectorLISP now fits in one sector

…still cannot free memory. I run my programs in Qemu with 2GB which seems to suffice.) More details: https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2021-10-30 · in Show HN: SectorLISP now fits in one sector

…exact purpose a few years ago, but ended up with a more imperative, statement-oriented approach: https://github.com/akkartik/mu [1] https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/106978783913724906

comment by akkartik · 2021-09-26 · in Designing Low Upkeep Software

I wrote something up when I ran into these instructions last year: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/linux/x86_approx.md

comment by akkartik · 2021-09-13 · in Emulating AMD Approximate Arithmetic Instructions on Intel

…how to represent expectations of screens when they contain graphics. Long version: My Mu project ( https://github.com/akkartik/mu ) is building a computing stack up from machine code. The goal is partly to figure out why people don't do…

comment by akkartik · 2021-08-29 · in Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?

…six months I've been dipping my toes in OS development for x86 with BIOS, SVGA and ATA interfaces: https://github.com/akkartik/mu And I'm way out of my depth. I have this suspicion that x86 might be one of the more difficult environments…

comment by akkartik · 2021-06-27 · in I spent 5 years writing my own operating system

…"abstracts" from me. http://akkartik.github.io/mu/html/mandelbrot-fixed.mu.html Main project page: https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2021-05-09 · in The Wrong Abstraction (2016)

…also your https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26646153#26669166 . I'm curious what you think of my https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2021-04-02 · in Code Reading Club (2020)

…to have on hand? However, looking closer at the Mu history, this seems like the closest version: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/61b8fe6b18c6314268ed24d7... The prose isn't identical. I think somebody was rearranging the prose as they…

comment by akkartik · 2021-03-21 · in SubX: A minimalist assembly language for a subset of the x86 ISA (2019)

…the software (and laws) that run their society". For a paragraph-length exposition see the top of https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme .)

comment by akkartik · 2021-03-21 · in SubX: A minimalist assembly language for a subset of the x86 ISA (2019)

…guessing it would start "0f/" but after that, how much gets repeated and with what metadata? [1] https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/subx_opcodes

comment by fernly · 2021-03-21 · in SubX: A minimalist assembly language for a subset of the x86 ISA (2019)

List of supported instructions: https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/main/subx_opcodes I haven't tried to implement C, but can't immediately think of a reason why not. Forks strongly encouraged; if you decide to try to implement one, I'd…

comment by akkartik · 2021-03-20 · in SubX: A minimalist assembly language for a subset of the x86 ISA (2019)

Not sure what's going on with this website, but I'm happy to see interest in my project: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme OP is an old version of the Readme from a year ago. Here's the current page on SubX:…

comment by akkartik · 2021-03-20 · in SubX: A minimalist assembly language for a subset of the x86 ISA (2019)

…on the principle[1] (one possible way of looking at it) of avoiding parsing as far as possible. https://github.com/akkartik/mu Mu takes the dwm[2] principle of avoid-config-files/modify-sources-to-reconfigure to the limit. The idea is that…

comment by akkartik · 2021-03-04 · in It Can Happen to You

…for a text editor I built in a statement-oriented language with built-in support for layers: https://github.com/akkartik/mu1/tree/master/edit#readme . It's also in my most recent project, though it's only used in a tiny bootstrapping shim…

comment by akkartik · 2021-02-28 · in Noweb – A Simple, Extensible Tool for Literate Programming

…strings. I know because I run a userland that uses length-prefixed strings as far as possible: https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2021-01-03 · in Rust is now overall faster than C in benchmarks

…it en masse , it seems useful to diversify our eggs into multiple baskets. Here's what I work on: https://github.com/akkartik/mu . It's a computer built up from machine code, designed to be unportable and run on a single processor family.…

comment by akkartik · 2020-12-07 · in Why Programming Is Hard to Fundamentally Improve (2017)

…we have to consciously make some scale-hostile design choices. I've been poking at this problem: https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akkartik · 2020-11-13 · in Software development: should we stop? Maybe we should

…talk on the subject: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk I'm super interested in the subject: https://github.com/akkartik/mu . In the framework of this thread I focus on 2 of the 3 layers: problem and software. Hardware is out of…

comment by akkartik · 2020-09-14 · in Bootstrapping a Forth in 40 lines of Lua code (2008)

…try to approach this challenge from various angles, see e.g.: https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ https://github.com/akkartik/mu

comment by akavel · 2020-07-12 · in Reflections on Trusting Trust (1984) [pdf]

Shameless plug: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme uses an instruction set designed in the 80s: x86.

comment by akkartik · 2020-03-25 · in Getting started with bare-metal assembly

No, I use functions: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme I just propose to not maintain 3 levels of functions where one will suffice, just to preserve some "interface" for "backwards compatibility". You aren't forced to understand…

comment by akkartik · 2020-03-17 · in Bicycles for the mind have to be see-through [pdf]

…to read a codebase built in this way, to get a feel for what I use layers for. Candidate codebases: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme https://github.com/akkartik/mu1#readme (an earlier prototype that uses very different mechanisms, and…

comment by akkartik · 2019-12-12 · in Layered Programming (2013)

…goal was to create a complete computing stack in 20k LoC. My current project has a similar goal: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme You mentioned tech debt. I think I have a more aggressive definition of tech debt than most: any…

comment by akkartik · 2019-12-12 · in Layered Programming (2013)

…on my mind. My current project using this approach is a bootstrapped computing stack from scratch: https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme . It's at ~40k LoC (of machine code) and self-hosted, and it can create bootable images (when packaged…

comment by akkartik · 2019-12-12 · in Layered Programming (2013)