University of Sydney

A C compiler in LISP, a LISP in C, and the subject that changed my life

In 1986 I took Compiler Techniques under Bruce Ellis and wrote a C compiler in LISP. I have got it running again, on hardware that did not exist when I wrote it.

Rubato: A Music Input and Performance System

My 1987 honours thesis at the University of Sydney. A language for writing music down that reads like music rather than like code, and a system that performs it.

A 6809 board that recorded MIDI and spoke SDLC

Five of us built one microprocessor board in 1987 and submitted it for two courses at once. It bridged a synthesiser and a VAX, and it was meant to be where Rubato came out.

1984 — 1988

University of Sydney

Bachelor of Science (1st Class Honours and University Medal)

University Medal, the E. Trenchard Miller Memorial Scholarship, and a University Postgraduate Research Award.

Hons87

A site dedicated to the students of Sydney University Computer Science Honours 1987.

lisp-cc

The C compiler I wrote in LISP for Bruce Ellis's Compiler Techniques subject at Sydney, recovered and grown into a full K&R 1978 compiler that emits arm64 instead of VAX. Ships with a reconstruction of the LISP interpreter it was marked against and the 1979 Seventh Edition C library, so the whole thing still bootstraps itself to a byte-identical fixed point.