Andrei Ciobanu
andreinc.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2021
Andrei Ciobanu writes about small programming projects, math, and C, including a 125-line virtual machine and a single-binary blog.
What HN saysHN links his compact C virtual machine post and his single-executable blog; commenters also praise his math exams essay and blogroll.
27HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
39stories submitted
2.1Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Challenging software projects some programmers should try5 people · 79 points · first shared 2024 · 35 comments on HN
- 2Writing a register based VM in less than 125 lines of C code4 people · 295 points · first shared 2021 · 41 comments on HN
- 3Four integers are enough to write a Snake Game4 people · 24 points · first shared 2022 · 8 comments on HN
- 4An animated introduction to Fourier series3 people · 603 points · first shared 2024 · 88 comments on HN
- 5The math exams of my life3 people · 137 points · first shared 2024 · 86 comments on HN
- 6The Sinusoidal Tetris2 people · 244 points · first shared 2024 · 52 comments on HN
- 7A joke in approximating numbers raised to irrational powers2 people · 109 points · first shared 2024 · 41 comments on HN
- 8A blog that is a single executable binary2 people · 93 points · first shared 2022 · 36 comments on HN
- 9Demystifying bitwise operations, a gentle C tutorial2 people · 8 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Hash, displace, and compress: Perfect hashing with Java2 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 11Implementing Bloom Filters in C2 people · 6 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 12A selection of 20 beautiful algebra problems2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13The 'trickonometry' of math olympiad inequalities2 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Implementing Hash Tables in C1 people · 268 points · first shared 2021 · 159 comments on HN
- 15A Tale of Java Hash Tables1 people · 128 points · first shared 2021 · 87 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
zackmorris · 2025-10-21
I did a quick search for "smallest C virtual machine" and found this 16 opcode implementation in 125 lines of C:
https://www.andreinc.net/2021/12/01/writing-a-simple-vm-in-less-than-1…
Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29492183
I'm looking for small VMs like this to run sandboxed experiments and test just-in-time (JIT) compilers so that I can explore things like converting abstract syntax trees (AST) between languages and prefix/infix/postfix notation, if anyone has any favorites.
Bonus points for supporting advanced concepts like atomic operations for concurrency.
nomemory · 2025-01-03
Not a garden but I also curtate links that I find interesting here:
https://www.andreinc.net/links/
And maintain an active blogroll with blogs I follow:
https://www.andreinc.net/blogroll
oriettaxx · 2024-06-05
this is super great from him, too https://www.andreinc.net/2024/01/09/the-most-important-math-exams-of-m…
ratrocket · 2022-04-21
Presumably following on from recent posts around the web:
https://j3s.sh/thought/my-website-is-one-binary.html
(HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30937515)
and (inspired by the above)
https://www.andreinc.net/2022/04/10/a-blog-that-is-a-single-executable…
(HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31081049)
_fw · 2024-11-18
404, here’s the new URL:
https://www.andreinc.net/2024/11/18/a-function-to-approximate-raising-…
factormeta · 2024-06-04
The link to source code is broken. Looks like someone forgot to put a '/' in the href link. The actual link is:
https://www.andreinc.net/2024/04/24/assets/js/2024-04-24-from-the-circ…
Looks like it is using processing to do the animation.
jprete · 2024-04-28
I saved this link to a list of project ideas from (probably) a HN comment a while ago: https://www.andreinc.net/2024/03/28/programming-projects-ideas
It's got a lot of stuff on it, so I'd suggest picking one thing that looks doable and interesting to you?
DeathArrow · 2023-12-08
A more succint presentation here: https://www.andreinc.net/2010/10/05/converting-infix-to-rpn-shunting-y…
sn9 · 2025-12-13
Software Design by Example sounds like what you want [0].
There's also NAND to Tetris [1], csprimer [2], and/or lists like these [3] or codecrafters [4].
[0] https://third-bit.com/sdxpy/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Principles-dp…
[2] https://csprimer.com/courses/
[3] https://www.andreinc.net/2024/03/28/programming-projects-ideas
[4] https://app.codecrafters.io/catalog
coolhand2120 · 2024-06-20
A few companies have commercialized the concept of physical audio modeling. Audio modeling allows for complex control surfaces (e.g.: https://roli.com/products/seaboard/rise2) that use MPE (Multi polyphonic expression).
https://audiomodeling.com/. Creates the SWAM technology and provides a whole bunch of physically modeled instruments, like horns, winds, and strings.
For more fundamental sounds check out Ableton Suite
https://www.ableton.com/en/live/compare-editions/#software-instruments
Ableton provides a number of physically modeled instruments. Tension = string, collision = mallet/percussion, and a few more.
Both are quite expensive and require a somewhat powerful machine.
While these sound cool, a sampler, that is a synth that plays recorded versions of the real instrument, sounds much more "real" than a modeled version. That's thanks to the Fourier transform. https://www.andreinc.net/2024/04/24/from-the-circle-to-epicycles
A good place to start on sound in general is at Bartosz Ciechanowski's blog on sound: https://ciechanow.ski/sound/