I did the same thing with my ZX Spectrum - writing programs in assembly language on paper, then manually looking up each opcode in the table at the back of the

I did the same thing with my ZX Spectrum - writing programs in assembly language on paper, then manually looking up each opcode in the table at the back of the manual. After writing out all the opcodes I'd then have to work out the values to use for any relative jumps, once I knew how long each instruction had been. Finally the whole thing would be POKEd into memory, and tested. Writing code like that, without a compiler/assembler was simultaneously a lot of fun and utterly exhausting. I know I got into the habit of putting in random "nops" just in case I had to add new functionality in later revisions - that would allow some unconditional jumps to be patched into place to avoid having to change offsets, etc.