@cobbpg @jos1264 Just look at the size of the JVM. If the benchmark is your typical #C64 hand-written assembly code, this certainly qualifies for "bloat" 😈

Regarding features, yes, #kickassembler has an insanely powerful macro language, actually more like a full-blown scripting language in disguise. That makes it quite popular among demo coders, for example.

What it lacks (at least for my "taste") is a linker. Defining your memory map in a "linker script" and then just filling segments (including e.g. #zeropage) in individual modules, leaving the hard stuff to the linker, is a whole new level compared to traditional toolchains more similar to what you had on the real machine.

I can easily use whatever language I like to precalculate my triangulated sprite flight paths or whatever ... but I can't replace a linker with external tools 😂

the thing I find most remarkable about #KickAssembler is that I can envision writing code VERY SIMILAR to code I'd write today, that is actually a THIN WRAPPER around the MOS 6502 instruction set

like seriously - code that doesn't feel foreign in 2023 driving a machine that was launched in 1982

that's fucking rad

#retrocomputing #Commodore64 #programming