I don't think it was just "pros". I had assemblers during my high school years. In fact Atari shipped one as a cartridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Ass

I don't think it was just "pros". I had assemblers during my high school years. In fact Atari shipped one as a cartridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor With which I wrote several programs during my high school years. The thing that sucked about the Atari Assembler Editor is it worked like basic. Lines were numbered. You'd type LIST to see your program each line prefixed by a number. LIST 100-200 would list lines 100 to 200. Etc.. But you could renumber lines to insert stuff if you ran out of line numbers. That was replaced by the Atari Macro Assembler. http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm Which I also had in my high school years before going pro. It was pretty similar to modern assemblers. I don't remember the price but I wasn't rich so it couldn't have been that expensive. It's possible I pirated the Atari Macro Assembler (thought I don't think so) but I couldn't have pirated the Atari Assembler Editor Cartridge :-)