Christophe de Dinechin is a French

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, with contributions in

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s and

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

Programming languages

Dinechin contributed to

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, 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 Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computin ...

, but now widely used across platforms.

XL programming language

Dinechin is the designer of the XL programming language and associated

concept programming Christophe de Dinechin is a French computer scientist, with contributions in video games, programming languages and operating systems. Programming languages Dinechin contributed to C++, notably a high-performance exception handling implementati ...

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 ( constituency) ...

and

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

. 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 c ...

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

Intentional programming In computer programming, Intentional Programming is a programming paradigm developed by Charles Simonyi that encodes in software source code the precise ''intention'' which programmers (or users) have in mind when conceiving their work. By using ...

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 is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros and t ...

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'', a "groundbreaking"

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

game (probably the first 3D platform game), de Dinechin heavily influenced

Frederick Raynal Frederick may refer to: People * Frederick (given name), the name Nobility Anhalt-Harzgerode * Frederick, Prince of Anhalt-Harzgerode (1613–1670) Austria * Frederick I, Duke of Austria (Babenberg), Duke of Austria from 1195 to 1198 * Frederic ...

, the main developer of '' Alone in the Dark''. 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 Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Ser ...

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

HP Integrity Virtual Machines Integrity Virtual Machines is software from Hewlett-Packard that allows multiple virtual machines to run concurrently on any Itanium server running HP-UX, notably the HPE Integrity Servers line. It is part of HP's Virtual Server Environment suite ...

. He was awarded 10 US patents for this work.

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. It is 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 (skyscraper), an 82-story residential skysc ...

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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

drivers for the HP DE200C Digital Entertainment Center, turning it from a web-connected CD Player into a true digital video recorder. Christophe de Dinechin is currently CEO of Taodyne, a company that develops a 3D animation tool, using his XL programming language to describe dynamic documents.

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)