User:Mike Van Emmerik

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This user comes from Australia.
prog This user is a programmer.
This user enjoys reading science fiction.
This user supports the use of wind power, solar power, and electric vehicles.
?met? This user prefers metric units and cannot figure out why Americans have such a hard time with them.
This user is skeptical of the Zodiac.

I am currently a software developer for Veracode, Inc. In 2007, I completed a PhD on "Static Single Assignment for Decompilers". I have a decade of experience as an electronics engineer, and longer as a software engineer. My main interest is in low level programming, particularly disassemby and decompilation. I am the main contributor to the DeCompilation Wiki, though I don't have much time lately to keep it up to date. I was also co-author of the Boomerang open source machine code decompiler.

I've been playing with microprocessors since 1975; I've been involved with the SC/MP, 2650, Z80, 6502, 6809, 68000, Z8000 and Intel x86/Pentium processors, and others.

In an earlier phase of my life, I was interested in the mathematics of gambling. I attempted to beat three casino games: Blackjack (with card counting), Roulette (with physical prediction), and Video Poker with progressive jackpots. Third time lucky, I made a comfortable profit from VP, until the local casinos (in Queensland, Australia) pulled the machines in favour of slot machines with higher returns for the casinos. The logical progression to online gambling has been hampered by a lack of time, though I did write a program to autoplay some online games. None of them seemed totally on the level, another reason for not continuing to explore that scene.

I enjoy Science Fiction, particularly stories about robots or time travel, but again time is too short for anything meaningful of late. I'm fascinated by the ideas of Marshall Brain's Robotic Nation, particularly his Manna online book.