> --- On Sun, 2/8/09, Paul Bennett <paul.w.bennett@...> wrote:
>
>> Where does the design of imaginary computer architectures
>> (and programming languages) stand in the ranks of
>> con-somethinging?
>>
>> It's probably a highly esoteric question, but
>> that's what I'm doing right now,
>
> Back in the 1970's when I took my first graduate course in computer hardware
> design I became quite obsessed with designing the "perfect" computer
> architecture. Needless to say that ended up being a pointless waste of time,
> although I did learn a lot about possible architectures along the way.
>
> Since then I have designed numerous assorted computer languages of various
> kinds, most of which were never implemented. I did, however, create one
> computer language from scratch that was actually commercially successful for
> a short while. The language was for the Altair 680 home computer kit. I
> called it VTL (for Very Tiny Language) and it had an editor/interpreter that
> occupied only 768 bytes (actually, it used 767 bytes, but the ROM chips held
> 768, so I had one unused byte left over). (See:
http://www.altair680kit.com/
> although I am not credited on that page, a friend by the name of Frank McCoy
> made some improvements and released his version as VTL-2
> <
http://www.altair680kit.com/manuals/Altair_680-VTL-2%20Manual-05-Beta_1-Searchable.pdf>
> I am credited in that manual.)
>
> I still very much enjoy creating con-computers and con-programming
> languages. :)
>
> --gary
>