While my story pales in comparison to Mel’s, when I first started learning 6502 assembly, I was a kid, and didn’t have money for an assembler. So, I wrote the code out on paper, and then using the opcode reference in the back of the programming book, converted those instructions into their opcodes, and poked them into memory. A quick “sys xxxxx” command would run my code. So, not QUITE as awesome, but I *DO* understand what he was saying.
“poked them into memory.”
Oh yes!
God bless Mel.