Category: old

Yes! Chapter 2 is finished! Read it to get ready to start building a real compiler in the next chapter. Learn how compilers & interpreters work and set up all the tools you need (C++ compiler, assembler, etc).

Friday, Oct. 17, 2003 (Late)

Been attending the UCF Robotics team the last month or so. We are finally forming groups and I’ve decided to help with the vision system. So I’m going to be up to my ears in pixels and graphics!

Whew! I spent a solid week trying to build a pasta bridge for my engineering class competition. We used lasagna, fettuccine, and tube noodles and melted sugar to build a standard arch bridge. Although not terribly strong, it looked like a bridge…unlike most of the other contestants. We got our picture taken, actually! Anyhow, our bridge weight 371 grams and held 2,200 grams, so it held nearly 7 times its weight! Not bad…but not particularly good, either!

Today is my sister’s birthday…sweet sixteen! So I sent her an online card and a knitted penguin. That’s why there hasn’t been much activity…I’ve been up at 2 AM knitting like old grandma used to do. Anyhow, the Compiler Tutorial is comming along. Chapter 1 is in final form, just need to convert it to a couple more formats. Expect it soon!

Well, it took almost an entire day, but I managed to add a print link to the pages. This way you can swap between a page optimized for navigation and one optimized for printing. The only difference is the left navigation bar goes away on the print version.

Well, my parents and grandparents came for a visit and we had a lot of fun. On a more serious note, I started to work on the Compiler Tutorial section. Still have a lot of work to do, but you can see most of the first chapter.

Whew! I survived the first round of mid-mid term exams & quizes. Now for a relaxing weekend with my family (its family weekend at UCF). Oh, yeah, updates for the website. Right, Brian…

Official unveiling of the site. Nothing works except some of my Academic pages. Specifically, most of my Resource Geography notes are online for the test tomorrow.

Yes, I love it! They gave my group the wrong co-ordinate in my Intro to Engineering class, so we wandered around in the woods with a GPS for hours! Ahh, the joys of being an engineer!

KoolB Linux release! This is the first beta release of KoolB for Linux. With the same functionality as the Windows version, you should feel right at home. The only real difference is that some of the libraries are lacking a little. However, since neither the Linux nor the Windows versions of the libraries are complete yet, I think this is acceptable.

Interested? Download it! I need lots of beta-testers to iron out its many bugs. I also need people who want to create libraries and so forth for KoolB.

First Beta Release of KoolB! This is the first beta release of KoolB! With support for external functions and directives, you can now start creating real life programs, not just example programs. There are an abundance of new features:

• External functions (WinAPI, custom DLLs, etc)
• Directives ($AppType, $Optimize, $Compress, $Include, $Asm, $Const, $Define, $IfDef, $IfNDef)
• You can write DLLs in KoolB now!
• $Asm directive to write inline assembly language
• Optimization to remove unused functions
• Ability to $Include files
• Automatic compression of your program or DLL
• hInstance and CommandLine$ pre-set variables
• Some incomplete libraries
• Some more precise compile time
• Many bug fixes

Limitations in the KoolB: too many to list!

Interested? Download it! I need lots of beta-testers to iron out its many bugs. I also need people who want to create libraries and so forth for KoolB.

KoolB Version 12 for Linux Released! Thanks to Ryan and his persistent requests for the Linux version, I’m now releasing a Linux version. The Linux version has the same features as the Windows versions.

Limitations in the Linux KoolB (in addition to the Window’s limitations):

• Strange results with storing/retrieving numbers in UDTs
• Sleep will only sleep for whole seconds, like 1 or 2, not .5 (1/2)

Interested? Download it and check out the sample program in the Examples folder. They are the exact same ones as the Windows version, so you can compare how the two versions work.

KoolB Version 12 Released! Yippee! Yet another release – this time its version 12 (like duh, what else comes after 11?). The latest in this release is:

New features in KoolB:

• Can create subs & functions that take any number of parameters
• Can call them anywhere in the program (even recursively)
• Can use function in expressions
• Can return a value by storing it in Result
• KoolB can now (with some modifications that come with $AppType DLL), create DLLs with those subs & functions you’ve created

Limitations in KoolB:

• You can only pass parameters by value, not by reference
• You can only pass simple data types by reference – do not try to pass UDTs or arrays
• You cannot create arrays or UDTs inside functions
• Subs & Functions without any parameters must still use parenthesis (like C)

Interested? Download it and check out the Functions/funcs.bas program in the Examples folder.

Minor updates: It has been busy lately, so not much has been going on. However, I’ve gotten some minor updates on the site and also a start on the next KoolB version. Will keep everybody updated as things progress.

As for the repetitive strain injury, it’s coming along, but it still hurts. I told my doctor and he said I have to buy oxycodone cod and take it every so often, for a couple of weeks. I asked him if people usually fully recover from something like this because it would really affect my work if it didn’t. His response was that usually people do fully recover but as with everything, there are outliers. He told me that in two weeks time we would run a few tests again to check my progress, and discuss the results of the tests and what to do moving forward then.

KoolB Version 11 Released! Yes, I agree that the best part of the development cycle is the release – and that time has come again. So what’s so exciting about this version?

New features in KoolB:

• Boolean expressions (And, Or, Not)
• Releation operators (=, <>, <, >, <=, >=)
• If statements with ElseIf as well
• While statements
• End statement to terminate program

Interested? Download it and check out the Who Are You sample program in the Examples folder.

KoolB Pages are up now! All the KoolB pages are up and running right now. That means you can now find out more about KoolB. And yes, the download links work too. Although they are not complete, they represent most of the KoolB content.

A picture is worth a 1000 navigation methods! Thanks for all the ‘easter-egg’ & ‘green has to go’ comments that helped me decide how to improve the site. I improved the navigation with some mouse-over button images. I also added an official logo for the site. Is this an improvement?

I also added a counter to the site last Saturday – and in less than a week, I have gotten 100 hits! I thought most of it is probably spam bots searching for my e-mail address, but it was brought to my attention by my wife that my usage of customer journey maps by Salesforce actually seems to be having the most impact, how exciting! If anybody is actually looking at this, this site is under construction and is not complete by a long shot, so don’t expect all (or any!) of the links to work.

Yet Another Redesign!?! I didn’t like the old design much (too dark & drab, not to mention very buggy on other browsers & platforms), so I changed the design to something more simple and cheery. If you puke when you first load the page, drop me an e-mail 🙂

Whoope! Release 10 of My Compiler: A pre-release of KoolB Version 10 is now available. Head over to the download section to check it out. Be sure to run the example programs (the popular request one is really neat ;). If you find any bugs, be sure to report them. Thanks.

Yep! Another Revamp of the Website: I took a Web Page Design course this semester, so part of the course is to re-design this web site and add content to it. Hence, the great adventure begins.