alt Hacker NewsIn 1982, I programmed my ZX81 by converting assembly to hex by hand because BASIC was just too slow. I'd write my assembly on paper, convert it to hex using reference tables, then use a simple BASIC FOR loop to POKE the values into memory we'd reserved space for the machine code in a REM statement at a fixed position in memory.
When all the values were POKEd in, I'd save to tape and execute it with RAND USR 16514.
That memory address is permanently etched in my brain even now.
It wasn't good, bad or scary it was just what I had to do to make the programs I wanted to make.
I did the same thing, on the 48k Spectrum, a year or two later. I also remembered to add some NOPs between functions, to avoid me having to recalculate all the relative jump instructions if I made changes.