Case Studies

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Sometimes it can be helpful to examine a tinyprog in detail, seeing what choices were made and why:

MELT.COM: We take a cute program from the 1980s and see how far we can crunch it down
m8trix 8b: An "Enter The Matrix" screen display in only 8 bytes
4is256: Řrřola's Tetris is a full tetris clone with scoring
paint16b: Hellmood's paint program in 16 bytes (really)
Indian Spirit: An American Indian tapestry with music in 32 bytes
Essence: Fakery of path tracing and lighting, with audio, in 64 bytes
Memories: Detailed writeup on "Memories" (256 bytes)
Game of Life 32b; Writeup for game of life in 32 bytes
Christmas Tree: Implementation of a Christmas Tree on several platforms
MUZAK58: Playing some background byte-beat music through COVOX LPTDAC in 58 bytes

External Case Studies

Brainfuck is a very tiny language, having only 8 commands and an instruction pointer. Several compilers and interpreters have been made; Gynvael archived many different versions along with their source code, the smallest of which was 125 bytes. qkumba took that as inspiration and created his own brainfuck compiler in 100 bytes (104 for one that is fully compliant). (Note: The term "compiler" is used mistakenly a lot in these descriptions; the majority of brainfuck programs are actually interpreters that load brainfuck programs and execute native code token by token. This one is an exception in that it really does compile the code entirely into native instructions first.)

Small Beginnings: The development of Homogenic Development Write up on Homogenic, by: Marquee Design (256 bytes)

Moving on: The development of Nanorail Development Write up on Nanorail, by: Marquee Design (256 bytes)

Full Circle: The development of Enigma Development Write up on Enigma, by: Marquee Design (256 bytes)

Crunching content: The development of Microdose Development Write up on Microdose, by: Marquee Design (128 bytes)

The long journey to 1k real-time ray-tracing Detailed technical writeup on Chrome Revenge by Abaddon (1024 bytes)

Disassembly of Farbrausch's "fr-016: bytes"

A disassembly of the 64-byte version of Klappquadrat

Maze generation in 10 bytes