Re: Constructed Computer Architectures (Concomps?)

--- 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

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