To me, Brass seemed much more complicated. Spasm is super fast, has powerful macro support, and can compile about anything easily (except maybe nostub TI-83 programs). Brass has lots of features and seems to be good for organizing your code. Use whichever one you like, i chose Spasm because it's faster and more lightweight, plus your code can be compiled on Linux/Windows/Mac. If you use certain features of Brass you might be limited to Windows, unless you want to reformat the file to be "spasm-compatible". Actually, my claim that Spasm is faster is based off of when i used Brass several years ago, so that might not be correct anymore. I don't know if Brass has seen much development since then but it's still a very powerful assembler (i think it can even rle compress your data for you). I just know that Spasm can compile a 40kb (final on-calc size) project importing lots of .bmps in the blink of an eye, which you'd realize how amazing that is if you'd ever used TASM before

And i don't think anyone still uses TASM anymore, it's a pain just to get it to run and the other alternatives (namely, Brass and Spasm) are much more convenient and feature-rich.

As to which one to use? You pick, it'll probably be the first one you get working. DJ_O says most people use Brass nowadays, and maybe that's true, but apart from Kerm and probably Benryves, i don't really know of anyone else. Maybe it's because a lot of the assembly programmers i speak to don't use Windows and have no other choice or maybe because the format feels closer to what we were used to with TASM or maybe just 'cuz it's so straightforward, i dunno. If you're going to start a huge project you might like some features of one over the other that let you organize your code more easily, but really it's not going to make that much of a difference: the assembled output will be exactly the same using both assemblers

To me, Brass seemed much more complicated. Spasm is super fast, has powerful macro support, and can compile about anything easily (except maybe nostub TI-83 programs). Brass has lots of features and seems to be good for organizing your code. Use whichever one you like, i chose Spasm because it's faster and more lightweight, plus your code can be compiled on Linux/Windows/Mac. If you use certain features of Brass you might be limited to Windows, unless you want to reformat the file to be "spasm-compatible". Actually, my claim that Spasm is faster is based off of when i used Brass several years ago, so that might not be correct anymore. I don't know if Brass has seen much development since then but it's still a very powerful assembler (i think it can even rle compress your data for you). I just know that Spasm can compile a 40kb (final on-calc size) project importing lots of .bmps in the blink of an eye, which you'd realize how amazing that is if you'd ever used TASM before

And i don't think anyone still uses TASM anymore, it's a pain just to get it to run and the other alternatives (namely, Brass and Spasm) are much more convenient and feature-rich.

As to which one to use? You pick, it'll probably be the first one you get working. DJ_O says most people use Brass nowadays, and maybe that's true, but apart from Kerm and probably Benryves, i don't really know of anyone else. Maybe it's because a lot of the assembly programmers i speak to don't use Windows and have no other choice or maybe because the format feels closer to what we were used to with TASM or maybe just 'cuz it's so straightforward, i dunno. If you're going to start a huge project you might like some features of one over the other that let you organize your code more easily, but really it's not going to make that much of a difference: the assembled output will be exactly the same using both assemblers

I think Iambian still uses TASM. As for Brass popularity I know that Kerm tried very hard to convince people to use it in the past since DCS SDK, which he setup, relies on Benryves ASM tools.

Ah ok. From what I remember, he said he stuck with TASM for very long because he already setup a lot of things on his ASM environment that only worked with TASM, so he didn't switch except maybe for certain projects.

Otherwise there might be the ones who started TI programming in the late '90s but are hardcore old-school purists who love command lines and will never ever use anything with a GUI.

TASM is really unreliable, though. It takes several seconds to compile HELLO WORLD and it has several bugs such as not supporting common bcall syntaxes and the No END directive before EOF. If I was still dedicated to calc programming and decided to learn ASM again, I would use modern tools.

ASM in 28 days is a nice starting point, you don't have to know anything in ASM before learning with it.

Also quick answer : assembly is a compiled language (assembled in fact), so you have to compile your *.z80 files into *.8xp files before sending them to your calc (everything's explained in ASM in 28 days) . An alternative is to use the on-calc assembler Mimas to edit and assemble your programs directly on-calc.

I used this to learn how to use ASM

Mimas isn't as featureful, though, and has the same problems with program corruption Axe does. Not their fault, but be careful when you only have source files on one volatile device.

I agree wholely. Make sure your codes are correct before running them (They could crash your calculator)

Thankfully, DCSE8 lets me edit programs from archive without having to run them first (then ON Break them). I wish DCS7 was updated with that feature. Or there is Zstart that does it, right? That said, be careful about archive corruption as well. X.x

DCS7 lets you do it too, just not from the homescreen.