XXICC (21st Century Co-design) is a not-for-profit research project which attempts to bring digital hardware/software co-design into the 21st Century using an improved programming language and a Reduced Software Complexity philosophy. Its goal is to make it easier and more enjoyable to write and maintain digital hardware and software. XXICC is pronounced “Chicken Coop”, so-called because it has so many layers.

XXICC’s GalaxC programming language narrows the gap between problem domain and language by allowing programmers to extend GalaxC by adding problem domain notations. Instead of adapting the task to the language, they adapt GalaxC to the task. The key extension mechanism in GalaxC is separation of syntax from semantics, a simple yet powerful way to add new notations. This is directly adapted from the Galaxy programming language developed in the late 1980s.

GalaxC programs may consist of ordinary ASCII characters and white space, like C. However, GalaxC programs may also have executable tables, schematic diagrams, comment blocks containing formatted text and figures, variable names in different fonts, special symbols, string literals containing formatting, and WYSIWYG dialog boxes. This eliminates the need for separate documentation files (which are very hard to keep synchronized with a program) as well as a separate “resource editor”.

These are all edited using the XXICC Object Editor, a unified program and document editor which combines the features of a document editor, spreadsheet program, figure/schematic editor, dialog box editor, and more into a small, easy-to-use program with a consistent user interface. The XXICC Object Editor is written entirely in GalaxC and is used for editing all XXICC software and documentation. XXICC believes in the “take your own medicine” approach to software engineering.

(This text is copyright 2011 John F. Beetem and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0). To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. No warranty is expressed or implied.)