Here's a short implementation (with explanation) in Scheme:

http://matt.might.net/articles/implementation-of-regular-exp...

I wonder how many of the HN members who vote up highly technical articles like this actually read them.

The real hackers perhaps ;)

I think there are many computer science students on HN. They have been taught the standard but complicated Regex -> NFA -> DFA -> Minimal DFA construction in school. Generating almost optimal DFA's directly from regex by simple pattern matching on the structure of the regex may appeal to these students.

Anyway, I personally get much more out of technical articles than "fluff" philosophizing articles.