I finally found the NASM assembler.

https://nasm.us/index.php

I had heard that name before, many times, but somehow never looked into it. Weird. 🤨🤔

This is the kind of program I was looking for.

1. It is free software. Especially in the DOS ecosystem, free/libre software is a very scarce resource.
   
2. It’s a small command line program, not a huge behemoth.
   
3. Documentation appears to be well written.
   
4. It can even cross-compile DOS binaries from Linux.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de NASM is great. I remember playing with it back in my HS days. It has lots of little helps to make assembly more approachable.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de before this century. Back when colleges taught C++ instead of Java for CS degrees.

I finished my data structures classes with C++ and the next year they changed it out with Java. When i transferred up after my assoc degree it was C++ using the counter-strike source game engine.

@prologic@twtxt.net High five, I’m “generation Java” as well! 😂 There were some leftovers of C++, we used that in the computer graphics courses in Uni a lot. But pretty much anything else that involved programming was Java.

(There was nothing even remotely resembling CS in our “high school”. That school neither had the required teachers nor the equipment / PCs.)