Large-scale analysis of code re-use in Atari 2600 games (2022)

[mwalden]

Hello,

While browsing Hacker News ( https://News.YCombinator.com ) recently, I saw a link to an academic paper posted at the ACM that might be of interest to users here.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Large-Scale Analysis of Code Re-Use in Atari 2600 Games
https://DL.ACM.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3555858.3555948

This article had some comments posted (currently 32) on Hacker News:

https://News.YCombinator.com/item?id=36727337

I hope you find this interesting and useful.

- Michael

 

[Glenn Main]

“We can gain further insights into the possible explanations for code re-use by examining why artifacts are re-used in other human technologies. Here we draw upon the abundance of research on our oldest technology – stone.”

 

Uh, yep! Lol.

 

Thanks for posting the link, fun read.

[JetSetIlly]

Some interesting stuff in there. I think there's scope for further research.

 

I'd like to see the WT internal documentation mentioned in the paper. There's an image of the cover but no links to the actual document. Does anyone know if this exists?

 

I'd also like to see more information about HRCALC and CHRST. Both are in Carol Shaw's papers but I can't seem to find scans of those. Has anyone seen these original routines or have any more details about them?

[+Gemintronic]

On a similar track I'm very interested in..  I don't know the correct terminology.. code abuse?  Self modifying code.  Using code as data.  Anything that causes higher level language developers skin to crawl.

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

No mention of CloneSpy?  

[Mr SQL]

Interesting article, I liked the reference to the book of shared library routines that was uncovered.

I had thought the corporate developers would have had such a resource, nice to see the evidence for it.