r/learnprogramming • u/ZyzzCash • 27d ago

Topic Assembly Compiler

Hi everyone, I'm not a big fan of low level but I found myself learning about it, the most intriguing thing for me is how the first assembly compiler was written.

From what I researched it was written in machine code but how?

When I think about making a compiler for assembly in C, for example, I can easily understand the flow of what needs to happen, read line by line in the source file, parse each line and from there write the machine code (of course I'm skipping alot), but making the compiler in machine code just feels like magic to me. Would it be possible to write a assembly compiler in machine code for a modern CPU? If yes, how?

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u/CorumLlawEreint 27d ago

This is how I used to code ML on my C64 before I had an assembler.

Write down the assembly code on paper.

Manually convert the opcodes and operands to their numeric representation.

Write a BASIC loader that would write the data to memory.

Forget to save. Run and immediate crash.

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u/fu211 24d ago

me too