Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II

Starting with Assembly is simply a bad idea because the tooling is terrible, and the learning curve of the tooling is steep. Filled with arcane codes and abbreviations and workflow right out the gate.

Programming concepts are pretty much universal. Being distanced from computer architecture is not a limitation for novice programmers, Python et al succeeds for a reason.

If you're determined to start with assembly, then I hope you can find someone to help you get started with all the machinations necessary to get from LDA #0 to A9 00 with as little drama as possible. Someone to show you how to use the assembler, what the directives mean, the linker, a symbolic debugger (if you're lucky). Someone to provide you with a .DUMPREG "START OF SORT" and .DUMPMEM BUFF $80 "AFTER INPUT" macros that you can liberally scatter throughout your code so you actually progress and get some insight into what the heck you code is doing. Perhaps some way to stop your programs that doesn't include hitting the reset button on the machine.

I mention that because, again, the tooling is terrible. All of the is easier said than done. None of the assembly books address this, none of the assembly program reference guides do either. Assembly is VERY black box. It's a large step up to even get started.

It's much easier to "learn programming" first at a higher level, where you can quickly progress and succeed, before turning into the dark hole that is assembly, particularly on older machines.

At least on a KIM-1 you can hit the STOP button and cursor through memory (being conscious that the memory architecture of the KIM is quite funky), something that simple is quite difficult on an Apple ][.

There are a few distinct things here. Learning 6502 assembly is straightforward, and you'd be better learning about simple (not modern) assembly languages at a high level--opcodes, registers, noop, branch, jump, compare, accumulators, program counters, and clock cycles. From there, start writing 6502 in an emulator and seeing what happens. That's where you're going to learn, and the feedback will be a lot faster. Programming for an Apple II will be more about learning how to interact with devices through memory.

You don't need to learn BASIC first but it might be helpful for bootstrapping at the beginning. Since it's included in the computer you can PEEK and POKE memory locations from BASIC and get a feel for how memory and machine code works without needing to understand the whole entire hardware, bootloading process, etc. first.

In my opinion BASIC, with its line numbers and GOTO / GOSUB feels assembly-ish anyway - you'll be doing a lot of JMP / JSR to control program flow which is different to how modern high levels are normally written.

6502 Assembly Language Programming by Leventhal.

This is how I learned. This book is great. I have the worn paper copy sitting 6 feet behind me as I type this. It's worth getting a paper copy if that is still possible.

https://archive.org/details/6502-assembly-language-programmi...

For learning basic, the question is: do you already know how to program?

Only reason I can think to learn basic is if you do not know any programming language. And even then there are better choices.

Do they make an C compiler for the AppleII?