Jake Roggenbuck

Quick Links: #

Favorite languages: C, Rust, Go, C++, Python, TypeScript

Topics of interest: Math, Space, Computer Science, Machine Learning

Projects: Regolith, Kronicler, RedoxQL, AlgoBoard, Auto Clock Speed.

Current Research: #

I’m currently conducting programming language research. Broadly programming language research focuses on security and safety of how programming languages are designed and implemented, as well as theoretical ideas that can be applied to change what traits languages can guarantee.

Recently, my research involves testing and improving regular expression libraries. My initial investigation into RegEx runtime resulted in a poster submission to the Undergraduate Research Conference at UC Davis.

Later work includes Regolith, which protects JavaScript and TypeScript backend applications from catastrophic backtracking by wrapping Rust’s linear time engine as a JavaScript package. This project landed on the front page of Y Combinator’s Hacker News.

Database Systems: #

One of my many interests includes creating database systems. My prior fascination with optimization was ignited when I took ECS 165A at UC Davis. My team’s database called RedoxQL placed first for one of the milestones based on performance. The technical write-up in the README explains how we eked out every bit of performance we could using flamegraps, benchmarks, compiler settings, and performant data structures (Like B-Trees).

Since then, I’ve created Kronicler which allows you to efficiently capture performance metrics for product systems. I created my own database to ensure it would be fast based on problem-specific constraints like logs being append only, making my database extremely fast for this specific use case. You can start using Kronicler at usekronicler.com for performance metrics, or you could use the fast database implementation for similar problems by importing the library and manually capturing data as explained in the README.

Notable Projects: #

AlgoBoard.org #

Algo Board is a website to promote friendly competition for solving algorithmic coding problems. Algo Board lets you host weekly / monthly competitions for your friends, clubs, and other organizations.

Auto Clock Speed #

A utility to check stats about your CPU, and auto regulate clock speeds to help with either performance or battery life.

Component #

A programming language that compiles to x86-64 assembly for math using postfix notation

JAI #

This was an entry to a “Lang Jam” where I had only a few days to make an entire interpreter. These were the types of programming languages that led me to programming language research.

Previous Research #

Before college, I was involved in two different research projects. This first, was a math paper I wrote with my friends Adam and Henry.

Abstract: “We investigate some interesting properties of the sequence made up of every third term of the Thue-Morse sequence, and consider other similar sequences.”