4 ms·

Don't you need to put padding everywhere so that you can edit the code without having to rewrite everything from scratch?

• JohnFen 2y ago
  During hand assembly? What I'd do is use graph paper and leave some rows blank in case I'd need to add stuff, and would occasionally redo specific pages if I ran out of room, or if I needed to make changes that were complex enough that marking them up would lead to an unreadable mess of scribbles. But the hand assembly part was close to the end of the process. Initially, I'd just write assembly on normal paper and not worry about converting anything to op codes until I considered the program complete enough to assemble and try running it. During that initial phase, I wouldn't worry about leaving space or anything because it was all going to be rewritten multiple times anyway.
  • amichail 2y ago
    I saw someone code directly on the hex dump without using paper.
    • JohnFen 2y ago
      Yes, I've known people who did that as well. Anyone can do it with simple programs and enough experience with the task, but some could do that with complex programs. They could even read hex codes directly and disassemble in their minds. I, like most programmers, never achieved that level of brilliance.
      • amichail 2y ago
        So did they use padding everywhere to make it possible to edit their code later?
        • JohnFen 2y ago
          Not as a rule. They're entering op codes directly into memory. Occasionally they may pad something with a few NOPs, but that was wasting a constrained resource so it was very rare. What they did was work out the code in their minds before entering anything into the computer.