As a next level beyond coloring... how about adding some interactivity? How about a slider to control the brightness of each type of byte. Turn everything but text to 10% when when you're looking for some words in a binary file.

As a non-European I want to say: thanks EU

Can it only make compilers for Lisp-like languages

Would a practical approach be parsing the source into clang's AST format. Then let it make the actual executable.

You'd more likely want to emit LLVM IR rather than try to match clang's internal AST. That's essentially what most new language projects do now (Rust, Swift, Zig all use LLVM as their backend). You get optimization passes and codegen for multiple architectures for free, and the IR is well-documented. The tradeoff is you skip learning about the backend, which is arguably the most interesting part.

Right that's what I meant ... the .ll file. Thanks

Why don't they charge by the Gigabyte

Because approximately no one wants that. Anyone who does already uses S3 etc.

They do, it's called B2 and is another product of them.

I use them for the b2 bucket style storage where this happens. Its expensive per gig compared to the cost of a working personal unlimited desktop account. I like to visit their reddit page occasionally and its a constant stream of desktop client woes and stories of restoring problems and any time b2 is mentioned its like "but muh 50 terabytes" lol

It's cheaper if you have multiple computers with normal amounts of data though. My whole family is on my B2 account (Duplicati backing up eight computers each to a separate bucket), and it's $10/month.

I guess some of the great symphonies doesn't count as "intellectual"?

I also nominate the invention of Clippy the friendly assistant.

Good on El Reg for doing some actual hands on fact finding.

I'd like to see some side-by-side before and after photos

I imagine it would be harder to make a design product that doesn't use pixels but it needs to be done - because that's the right way to make CSS

I don’t know, I like it.