“SectorC (github) is a C compiler written in x86-16 assembly that fits within the 512 byte boot sector of an x86 machine.”
A straightforward lexer alone took over 150 lines of C, which estimates to 300-450 bytes of x86-16. The fix was to borrow Forth’s trick and make every token space-delimited. The result handles globals, functions, if, while, pointers and inline machine code in one boot sector. Your hello world npm project downloads more than that before it prints anything.