I'll have to read more about the memory references to get a feel for that.
However it speaks of a compiler for ALGOL... it was compiled down to machine instructions. Assembly is just a representation of machine instructions, so I don't see how it can be said to not have an assembly language.
Maybe nobody ever bothered to write an assembler, but that doesn't mean that it somehow directly executes ALGOL.
Thanks for your replies, you have given me some food for thought.
> However it speaks of a compiler for ALGOL... it was compiled down to machine instructions. Assembly is just a representation of machine instructions, so I don't see how it can be said to not have an assembly language.
In this sense, you're completely right. But I think that people who grok the system mean something a bit different when they say it doesn't have an assembly language. (Disclaimer: I have no firsthand experience with Burroughs mainframes.)
The Burroughs system didn't execute Algol directly, true. But, the machine representation that your compiled down to was essentially a high-level proto-Algol. It wasn't a disticnt, "first-class citizen". It was, if you like, Algol "virtual machine bytecode" for a virtual machine that wasn't virtual.
If you're writing in C, or some other higher-level programming languages, there are times when you want more fine-grained control over the hardware than the more plush languages provide. That's the time to drop down to assembly code, to talk to the computer "in its own language".
The Burroughs mainframes had nothing analogous to that. The system was designed to map as directly to Algol as they could. It's machine language wasn't distinct from the higher-level language that you were supposed to use. To talk to a Burroughs system "in its own language" would be to write a rather more verbose expression of the Algol code you'd have had to write anyway, but not particularly different in principle.
So, I guess the answer to whether or not the Burroughs systems did or did not have an assembly language is a philosophical one. :P
However it speaks of a compiler for ALGOL... it was compiled down to machine instructions. Assembly is just a representation of machine instructions, so I don't see how it can be said to not have an assembly language.
Maybe nobody ever bothered to write an assembler, but that doesn't mean that it somehow directly executes ALGOL.
Thanks for your replies, you have given me some food for thought.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems_instruc...