Two components of a VLSI design environment being built at Princeton are described. The general theme of this effort is to make the design of VLSI circuits as similar to programming as possible. A conscious attempt is being made to apply experience in the design of large software systems to the creation of an appropriate environment for VLSI circuits. The two components described are a procedural language to specify circuit layouts and a switch-level circuit simulator for layout produced with this language. They have been chosen for presentation because many issues in their design are very similar to the issues that arise in the design of programming languages and software environments.