How I stopped worrying and started loving the Assembly

Or why robots are playing DOOM now. What programming for the Atari ST in 2025 has taught me.

I’ve never worked with assembly before, but I learned a lot from this article.

Amazing work. I am the same age às the author and also would love to tinker with old hardware. This article taught me that I can do that with emulators all the while using modern developer tools! That’s very motivating, will see if I can get started. My first computer was a PC XT 386 IIRC, maybe I can do the same kind of thing on that.

Comanche ( or at least an approximation of it ) on an Atari ST - that’s quite a feat!

I have been continuously hacking on my first computer, received in a delicate cross-Nullabor operation in 1983, the lovely little Oric-1. It’s a 6502 ‘also-ran’ victim of the 80’s 8-bit computing war, but is still .. fascinatingly .. actively hosting new software, even today.

The retro scene is alive and well, and in many small ways, flourishing. Even the obscure platforms get new device peripherals designed for them - among other things in my retro corner, I have a remote controllable Amstrad CPC6128 with an M4 card, putting it on a network .. a couple of ZX Spectrum variants with so much storage attached, the ‘why not just put every single spectrum game on it, ever’ question just hangs in the ether .. and an original C64 and Commodore monitor rig, sitting at one end of the city waiting for a LoRa/meshtastic session, to set it up, so we can chat with the other Oric/ZX Spectrum/Amstrad/etc. systems all over the place.

Anyway, I just want to point out, there is a very thriving retro scene, so learning assembly and participating in it, in your own way, is a very stimulating hobby. Even if you are a master of all the current tooling, learning the tools of the ancients will make you appreciate just how much bloat we tolerate, needlessly.

In any case, its often surprising where 6502/z80-like systems turn up these days, too ..