One of my colleagues was forced to do some changes in my assembler - well, here I admit, code :-) - while I was doing my military service. He has no problem of assemblers etc. but this particular processor was for him new, so he was not "fluent" in the instructions etc. to "write" efficiently, although he was able to "read".

So, he simply wrote down the necessary changes in C directly into the sources with semicolons as if comments; then he simply hand-translated it into asm line by line. The point is, he was able to write down quickly his ideas in C (any other real or pseudolanguage would do), while he would not be able to do it if he had to look up the details of each and every instruction while he tries to put down his ideas.

The good sideeffect of it was that it formed quite a good explanation of his changes - and even after years I know which exactly are the parts he wrote... :-)

JW