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Traces of CAL: a lost hybrid programming language (1959–1964)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45371493While digging through some old IBM technical reports, I ran into something that didn’t quite fit the usual pattern. Buried between dry charts and assembler notes were these odd references to an “experimental modular assembler.” At first, I figured it was just another obscure internal tool — IBM had tons of those back then. But the more I read, the stranger it got. The fragments kept pointing toward something bigger, almost like a forgotten programming language. After weeks of connecting dots across journals, archives, and even some old interviews, I think I’ve stumbled across traces of CAL — Combined Assembly Language, a short-lived hybrid that seems to have existed between 1959 and 1964.From what I’ve pieced together, CAL was a mix of raw assembly and higher-level constructs. Imagine writing assembly but with IF...ENDIF, FOR...ENDFOR, even modules and macros baked in — stuff that wouldn’t become mainstream until years later. The idea was that you’d write CAL, run it through a translatSep 25, 2025 11:09 AM