It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. Yeah, I grew up with 6502s, too. You'll think I'm wease

It was not that unusual to "hand assemble" programs, as it was not that unusual to remember the codes. Yeah, I grew up with 6502s, too. You'll think I'm weaseling out here, but "hand assembly" isn't what I was talking about. I feel the original comment implies that some people, intending to write significant machine code, sat down with BASIC and started typing in DATA statements. And I don't think that happened to any significant degree. As in the case of the "programming environment" under discussion, machine language routines force-fed into BASIC DATA statements were the output of another tool or process -- whether assembled by hand or by machine -- and were an intermediate form that was never intended to be editable.