Do most people use cross assemblers?
Do most people use cross assemblers?
I have very little knowledge of programming
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Ast A. Moore
- Rick Dangerous
- Posts: 2641
- Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 3:16 pm
Re: Do most people use cross assemblers?
I’m pretty sure they do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to use something like a Currah µSource or GENS for a while, but in almost no time flat you realize you can’t do any serious programming with these tools. The lack of decent copy and paste alone is going to be infuriating, to say nothing of versioning and file management.
Even back in the day, it was pretty unusual for any more or less notable titles to be developed on a single machine (although there were outliers, of course).
Another important aspect that shouldn’t be overlook is the fact that assembly programming normally involves profuse commenting. That would be rather difficult to achieve on low resolution screens of eight-bit micros. Syntax highlighting is another invaluable tool that helps with source readability.
Then there’s the issue of putting all the bits and pieces of your program together in a TAP or TZX file, which most cross assemblers can do with ease.
Even back in the day, it was pretty unusual for any more or less notable titles to be developed on a single machine (although there were outliers, of course).
Another important aspect that shouldn’t be overlook is the fact that assembly programming normally involves profuse commenting. That would be rather difficult to achieve on low resolution screens of eight-bit micros. Syntax highlighting is another invaluable tool that helps with source readability.
Then there’s the issue of putting all the bits and pieces of your program together in a TAP or TZX file, which most cross assemblers can do with ease.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Re: Do most people use cross assemblers?
Yes. Use a text editor on a PC like Crimson Editor or Notepad++ that has programmable function keys, then program one key to save the current file, and issue a DOS command-line instruction to pass the current file to a cross-assembler like PASMO (which can actually output working .TAP files, not just a compiled binary). Then program another function key (still in the text editor) to call an emulator with the compiled file name to see it running.