| Christophe de Dinechin | |
| Birth Place: | France |
| Known For: | XL programming language Alpha Waves HP Integrity Virtual Machines |
| Occupation: | Computer scientist |
Christophe de Dinechin is a French computer scientist, with contributions in video games, programming languages and operating systems.
Dinechin contributed to C++, notably a high-performance exception handling implementation[1] that became a de-facto standard in the industry.[2] de Dinechin was one of the proponents of a portable C++ ABI, initially developed for Itanium, but now widely used across platforms.[3]
Dinechin is the designer of the XL programming language and associated concept programming methodology.[4] "XL" is named for "eXtensible Language".
XL features programmer-reconfigurable syntax and semantics. 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. 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.
There are projects that exploit similar ideas to create code with higher level of abstraction. Among them are:
As initial developer of Alpha Waves, a "groundbreaking" Atari ST game (listed in the Guinness World Records as the first 3D platform game[5]), de Dinechin heavily influenced Frederick Raynal, the main developer of Alone in the Dark.[6] de Dinechin also wrote a few viral games for HP-48 calculators,[7] [8] and was the first person to take advantage of hardware-scrolling on these machines.[9]
In the early 2000s, he worked as a software architect for HP-UX,[10] and was the initial designer of HP's virtualisation platform for Itanium servers, HP Integrity Virtual Machines. He was awarded 10 US patents for this work.[11]
Since 2022, he also is the initiator and maintainer of DB48X, a new implementation of RPL.
Christophe de Dinechin did the initial port of Emacs to the Aqua user interface.[12] He wrote a variety of open-source drivers for the HP DE200C Digital Entertainment Center,[13] 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.[14]
Dinechin has published three books: