Any "real" assembler has to support forward references, otherwise you couldn't even jump past the initial data section, except by using an absolute address! Mi

Any "real" assembler has to support forward references, otherwise you couldn't even jump past the initial data section, except by using an absolute address! Minimizing the number of forward references may make the assembly run faster or use less memory, but usually it's just a convention to make the source code more neatly organized.