Christophe de Dinechin is a French

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, with contributions in

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Programming languages

Dinechin contributed to

C++ C++ (, pronounced "C plus plus" and sometimes abbreviated as CPP or CXX) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programmin ...

, notably a high-performance

exception handling In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an ...

implementation that became a de-facto standard in the industry. de Dinechin was one of the proponents of a portable C++ ABI, initially developed for

Itanium Itanium (; ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit computing, 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly dev ...

, but now widely used across platforms.

XL programming language

Dinechin is the designer of the XL programming language and associated concept programming methodology. "XL" is named for "eXtensible Language". XL features programmer-reconfigurable

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

and

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

. Compiler plug-ins can be used to add new features to the language. A base set of plug-ins implements a relatively standard

imperative language In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm of software that uses statements that change a program's state. In much the same way that the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands, an imperative program con ...

. Programmers can write their own plug-ins to implement application-specific notations, such as

symbolic differentiation In mathematics and computer science, computer algebra, also called symbolic computation or algebraic computation, is a scientific area that refers to the study and development of algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expressions ...

, which can then be used as readily as built-in language features.

Similar works

There are projects that exploit similar ideas to create code with higher level of abstraction. Among them are: *

Language-oriented programming Language-oriented programming (LOP) is a software-development paradigm where "language" is a software building block with the same status as objects, modules and components, and rather than solving problems in general-purpose programming languages, ...

Literate programming Literate programming (LP) is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of how it works in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macr ...

Model-driven architecture Model-driven architecture (MDA) is a software design approach for the development of software systems. It provides a set of guidelines for the structuring of specifications, which are expressed as models. Model Driven Architecture is a kind of doma ...

Video games

As initial developer of ''

Alpha Waves Alpha waves, or the alpha rhythm, are neural oscillations in the frequency range of 8–12 Hz likely originating from the synchronous and coherent ( in phase or constructive) neocortical neuronal electrical activity possibly involving thala ...

'', a "groundbreaking"

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

game (listed in the

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, list ...

as the first 3D platform game), de Dinechin heavily influenced Frederick Raynal, the main developer of ''

Alone in the Dark ''Alone in the Dark'' is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Infogrames. In most of the games, the player controls private investigator Edward Carnby, who goes to investigate a haunted house or town that is full of undea ...

''. de Dinechin also wrote a few viral games for HP-48 calculators, and was the first person to take advantage of hardware-scrolling on these machines.

Operating systems design

In the early 2000s, he worked as a software architect for

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...

, and was the initial designer of HP's virtualisation platform for Itanium servers,

HP Integrity Virtual Machines Integrity Virtual Machines is a hypervisor from Hewlett Packard Enterprise for HPE Integrity Servers running HP-UX. It is part of HP's Virtual Server Environment suite, and is optimized for Server (computing), server use. History Christophe de ...

. He was awarded 10 US patents for this work. Since 2022, he also is the initiator and maintainer of

DB48X RPL is a handheld calculator operating system and application programming language used on Hewlett-Packard's scientific graphing RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) calculators of the HP 28, 48, 49 and 50 series, but it is also usable on non ...

, a new implementation of RPL.

Other work

Christophe de Dinechin did the initial port of

Emacs Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

to the

Aqua Aqua is the Latin word for water. As such, it is often used in many words which relate to water, such as aquatic life. In English, it may also refer to: Arts * Aqua (color), a greenish-blue color Business * Aqua (Chicago), an 82-story resid ...

user interface. He wrote a variety of

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

drivers for the HP DE200C Digital Entertainment Center, turning it from a web-connected CD Player into a true digital video recorder. Between 2010 and 2017, Christophe de Dinechin was the CEO of Taodyne, a company developing a 3D animation tool, using a derivative of his XL programming language called Tao3D to describe dynamic documents.

Bibliography

Dinechin has published three books: * A French science-fiction novel called ''Informagie'' * A French book about physics called ''Réunifions la physique'' * A physics book called ''A theory of incomplete measurements''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dinechin, Christophe de Living people French computer scientists French video game designers Programming language researchers Kernel programmers Free software programmers Year of birth missing (living people)