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Fabrice Bellard is smart enough that he can probably work directly with obfuscated code without it having to go through a separate translation process. The "obfuscated" source could in fact be the original :)

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While this may seem like a joke when referring to this size of code, some people actually write this way:

http://nsl.com/papers/origins.htm

(Arthur Whitney's initial implementation of "J")

The example I use is: is it easier to read "a + b", or "a plus b"? In many cases, what looks like obfuscation is just shorthand notation.

The appropriate counterexample here is which is easier to read, "a plus b" or "aplusb"? :)

That is not "obfuscated", but rather J-style.

The rationale is: To write a J interpreter/compiler you need to know J. If you know J, then J-style C is easy to work with.

Could that be a byproduct of doing much assembly?

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