[COFF] machine code translation,as mental architecture models

[John R Levine]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2024, Paul Winalski wrote:
>> Macros were used very extensively in VAX MACRO, both for user programming
> and in the operating system.  All of the low-level system calls for user
> programs were implemented and documented as macros.  The OS assembly code
> made heavy use of macros as well.

Oh, no wonder the translator worked so well.

> Outside the VAX/VMS development group, BLISS was DEC's standard
> implementation language.  In the development organizations I worked in
> (software development tools and compilers), we did almost zero programming
> in assembly code. ...

When I was at Yale we did a fair amount of programming in BLISS-36 which 
was a pretty nice language once you wrapped your brain around some of its 
quirks like needing a dot for every memory reference.

Our Vaxes ran Unix so it was all C other than a few things like tracking 
down a bug in the 11/750's microcode that broke an instruction in the 
inner loop of printf().  I had managed to get a cross-compiling 
environment working an a PDP-11 but Bill Joy found the bug at the same 
time so we used his patched version.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly