[COFF] Re: machine code translation,as mental architecture models

Outside of product development, the internal DECSIM multi-level logic simulator and its CLI and compilers were also written in BLISS.  Most of these started out in BLISS-36 but they were all brought together with a fault simulation kernel on the VAX to take advantage of the larger address space. Some other internal VLSI CAD tools were also written in BLISS, although a few were written in more common languages.  The first (AFAIK) retargetable microcode assembler at DEC, MICRO, was written in MACRO-10; sources are on the net.  The next generation MICRO2 was written in BLISS and AFAIK the binary is available but the sources have sadly been lost.  <Insert obvious plea here.> Re: Paul's comment about the portable I/O library in BLISS: When I first encountered C, I used the Unix system calls to do I/O.  The "standard I/O" library was a very important addition to C's usability.  Similarly, when I first encountered BLISS-10, I had to type in a package from the DECUS documentation to call TOPS-10 to do I/O.  Getting the "XPORT" I/O (etc.) library for Common BLISS was invaluable for the CAD tools. People have repeatedly omitted I/O from the initial design of a language and relegated it to a library, but even if the language is intended to be used for a kernel, people learning the language ("Hello, world!") or using the language above the kernel for utilities will need to do I/O, so this library should be included in the language design from the very beginning.  I think this lesson has been learned by now.  Its fallout is recognized in Stroustrup's quote of a Bell Labs axiom, "Library design is language design, and vice versa." - Aron On 7/12/24 12:51, Paul Winalski wrote: